West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday carried out a major cabinet reshuffle amid the party facing heat over the arrest of now suspended minister Partha Chatterjee over the education scam case.
Babul Supriyo who defected to the ruling Trinamool Congress along with eight others will be taking oath today, according to India Today report.
The cabinet reshuffle, the first since the TMC returned to power for the third consecutive term last year, comes amid the party facing the heat over the arrest of senior minister Partha Chatterjee by ED over the school jobs scam.
Banerjee had on Monday carried out a major overhaul in her party and announced that a cabinet reshuffle will take place on Wednesday.
Nine new ministers to be inducted into the new cabinet are as follows:
1. Babul Supriyo
2. Snehashis Chakraborty
3. Partha Bhowmik
4. Udayan Guha
5. Pradib Majumder
MoS with independent charges
1. Biplab Roy Chowdhury
2. Birbaha Hasda
MoS
1. Tajmul Hossian
2. Satyajit Barman
Supriyo, a former Union minister and BJP MP who quit the saffron party and joined the TMC after being dropped from the Union cabinet last year, is presently a TMC MLA from Ballygunge assembly constituency in Kolkata.
Ray, a former minister of state for parliamentary affairs, has been with the TMC since its formation in 1998.
He was made the MoS, parliamentary affairs after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections but was not inducted into the cabinet after TMC came to power for the third consecutive term last year.
Ray was relieved of his organisational responsibilities in Kolkata North organisational district.
Bhowmick and Chakraborty, considered close to TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee in the party circles, have been relieved of their organisational responsibilities in North 24 Parganas and Hooghly districts respectively.
Guha, a former Forward Bloc leader who had joined TMC after the 2016 assembly polls, is a frontrunner for induction into the cabinet from north Bengal.
Son of former Left Front minister Kamal Guha, he is presently one of the tallest TMC leaders in Cooch Behar district.
Meanwhile, a party leader said that MoS in education department, Paresh Adhikary, whose name had also cropped up in the school jobs scam, is likely to face the axe.
(with agency inputs)
