Mamata reshuffles cabinet, Supriyo and 7 others take oath as ministers

Former Union minister Babul Supriyo, agricultural expert Pradip Majumdar and six other Trinamool Congress (TMC) legislators took oath as West Bengal ministers on Wednesday after chief minister Mamata Banerjee carried out a major reshuffle of her cabinet amid a probe by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into the bribe-for-job scam that has rocked the state.

Former minister Partha Chatterjee has been arrested and is presently in ED custody in the case.

Four MLAs – Supriyo (Ballygunge constituency), Majumdar (Durgapur East), Snehasish Chakraborty (Jangipara) and Udayan Guha (Dinhata) – were sworn in as cabinet ministers by governor La Ganesan at Raj Bhawan on Wednesday afternoon in the presence of the chief minister.

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“The poetic justice was delivered by Didi (Banerjee),” Supriyo said as he was allocated the tourism department and department of information technology and electronics that Banerjee was looking after till now.

Supriyo also said he resigned from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government last year as he was not happy with what he was doing despite serving as Union minister of state for two terms.

Majumdar, Chakraborty and Guha, whose father Kamal Guha was a well-known minister in the Left Front era, were given charge of the departments of panchayat and rural development, transport and north Bengal development, respectively.

The new inclusions in the cabinet rejig did not come as a surprise in view of Banerjee’s recent efforts to sideline controversial leaders and project upcoming ones among whom many are known to be followers of her nephew and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.

The chief minister also changed the portfolios of several old incumbents. She put her old and trusted aide, Sashi Panja, a doctor and daughter-in-law of former Union minister Ajit Kumar Panja, in charge of departments of industry, commerce and enterprises and public enterprises and industrial reconstruction that Chatterjee was earlier heading.

Minister of state for school education, Paresh Adhikary, whose daughter was sacked from a high school by Calcutta high court in view of her alleged illegal appointment as teacher during the job scam, was dropped from the government.

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Adhikary had switched over from the All India Forward Bloc before the 2021 assembly elections. He was replaced by Satyajit Burman in the cabinet.

Another senior minister, Moloy Ghatak, who was summoned twice by the ED in the coal scam case, was relieved of the important PWD department which went to Pulak Roy.

TMC functionaries said the rejig has a lot to do with Banerjee’s preparations for the 2023 panchayat polls and the more crucial 2024 Lok Sabha elections in which the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) campaign is expected to highlight not only corruption but bad governance as well.

The BJP, meanwhile, took a swipe at Supriyo.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave Supriyo opportunities to work for the nation. Let Bengal see what he can do for his people as part of a corrupt government. We wish him luck,” state party president Sukanta Majumdar said.