West Bengal Cabinet gets bigger
Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari expanded the West Bengal Cabinet to 41 members on Monday. Governor RN Ravi administered the oath of office at Lok Bhavan to 35 legislators, including senior journalist and former Consulting Editor of The Pioneer, Swapan Dasgupta.
Thirteen BJP MLAs were appointed as Cabinet ministers, three as ministers of State (independent charge), and 19 as ministers of State. The Council of Ministers now comprises 41 members, three fewer than the 44 permitted in the 294-member Assembly.
“The distribution of portfolios the ministers will take place on Wednesday during a meeting chaired by the CM at the secretariat,” said Cabinet Minister Tapas Roy. Earlier on May 9, five Cabinet Ministers and Adhikari were sworn in.
After Monday’s expansion, Agnimitra Paul, MLA from Asansol Dakshin, who was earlier sworn in as a Cabinet minister and entrusted with the Women and Child Welfare portfolio, is joined by Malati Rava Roy and by four other women MLAs-Moumita Biswas Mishra, Purnima Chakraborty, Gargi Das Ghosh, and Sumana Sarkara, as junior ministers. The Bengal BJP Government now has six women ministers.
The new ministers include doctors, academics, journalists, and blue-collar workers, reflecting a broad cross-section of the State’s society. Sharadwat Mukherjee, an oncologist from Bidhannagar, and Kalyan Chakraborty, a professor from Khardaha, were inducted as Cabinet ministers. Indranil Khan, an oncologist from Behala Paschim, was sworn in as Minister of State (independent charge). Kalita Majhi, formerly a house help, became Minister of State. Swapan Dasgupta, who won the Rashbehari seat in south Kolkata, and Jagannath Chattopadhyay from Suri in Birbhum, both journalists-turned-politicians, became Cabinet ministers.
Newly elected BJP MLAs Dudh Kumar Mondal, Deepak Burman, Manoj Oraon, Gouri Shankar Ghosh, and Arjun Singh also took oath as Cabinet ministers. BJP legislators Rajesh Mahata and Malati Rava Roy were sworn in as ministers of State (independent charge).
Ministers of State sworn in included Joyel Murmu, Ashok Dinda, Anandamoy Burman, Koushik Chowdhury, Gargi Das Ghosh, Bhaskar Bhattacharya, Dibakar Gharami, Sumana Sarkar, Santanu Pramanik, Purnima Chakraborty, and Umesh Rai.
Minister Nisith Pramanik, a Rajbanshi leader from Mathabhanga in Cooch Behar, is already in the Cabinet. On Monday, three new ministers from North Bengal joined: Deepak Burman from Falakata, Shankar Ghosh from Siliguri, and Manoj Kumar Oraon from Kumargram in Alipurduar.
Malati Rava Roy was appointed MoS (Independent Charge). Four others, Anandamay Burman, Bishal Lama, Koushik Chowdhury, and Biraj Biswas, were appointed as ministers of state. North Bengal now has nine ministers.
The previous TMC ministry included eight of 43 ministers from North Bengal. Adhikari’s council has slightly increased representation from the region.
The expanded council now includes 14 ministers from various ethnic groups, with 11 from the SC and ST categories sworn in on Monday.
The BJP inducted Deepak Burman, a SC MLA from Falakata, and Manoj Kumar Oraon, a tribal leader from Kumargram in Alipurduar, into the state Cabinet.
Pramanik, a Rajbanshi leader, along with Cabinet ministers Ashok Kirtania (a Matua leader) and Kshudiram Tudu (a tribal leader), had already joined. The number of SC/ST leaders in the Cabinet is now five. Additionally, Rajesh Mahata, a leader of the SC Kudmi community from Gopiballavpur in Jhargram, West Bengal, was inducted as minister of state. Three BJP MLAs from the ST community and six from the SC group became ministers of state. There are now 15 ministers from backward castes, representing about 37 per cent of the total.
