Kolkata: BJP MLAs Swapan Dasgupta, Tapas Roy and Shankar Ghosh were among the 35 legislators who took oath as ministers on Monday as West Bengal CM Suvendu Adhikari expanded his cabinet, taking the total strength of the council of ministers to 41.
A carefully-crafted balance, based on geographical, ethnic and gender considerations, characterised the expanded council of ministers of the first BJP-helmed government in the state.
Governor RN Ravi administered the oath of office to the legislators at a programme held at Lok Bhavan here in the presence of Adhikari, the existing ministers of his cabinet and senior bureaucrats of the state administration.
While 13 BJP MLAs were sworn in as cabinet ministers, three took oath as ministers of state (Independent Charge) and 19 others were inducted in the council as ministers of state.
“The distribution of portfolios for the ministers will take place on Wednesday during a meeting which will be chaired by the CM at the secretariat,” cabinet minister Tapas Roy said.
With five cabinet ministers, besides Adhikari, having already taken oath on May 9, the total strength of the state’s council of ministers stood at three short of the Constitution-mandated optimal count of 44 in the 294-member state assembly.
The inductees also represented the cross-section of Bengal’s society — with doctors, academics, journalists, and even those who worked in blue-collar jobs, such as house helps, before getting into politics, being offered berths in Adhikari’s council.
The BJP inducted Sharadwat Mukherjee, an oncologist who won the Bidhhannagar seat, and Kalyan Chakraborty, a professor from Khardaha, as cabinet ministers.
Another oncologist from Behala Paschim, Indranil Khan, was sworn in as minister of state (Independent Charge), while Kalita Majhi, who worked as a house help before foraying into politics, was awarded the position of minister of state.
Journalists-turned-politicians Swapan Dasgupta, who won the prestigious Rashbehari seat in south Kolkata, and Jagannath Chattopadhyay from Suri in Birbhum were also awarded cabinet berths.
Newly elected BJP MLAs Dudh Kumar Mondal, Deepak Burman, Manoj Oraon, Gouri Shankar Ghosh and Arjun Singh were among those who took oath as cabinet ministers.
BJP legislators Rajesh Mahata and Malati Rava Roy were sworn in as ministers of state (Independent Charge) in the government.
Among the ministers of state who were administered the oath were Joyel Murmu, Ashok Dinda, Anandamoy Burman, Koushik Chowdhury, Gargi Das Ghosh, Bhaskar Bhattacharya, Dibakar Gharami and Sumana Sarkar.
BJP MLAs Santanu Pramanik, Purnima Chakraborty and Umesh Rai were also sworn in as ministers of state.
Considering the presence of minister Nisith Pramanik, a Rajbanshi leader from the SC-reserved Mathabhanga seat in Cooch Behar, already in the cabinet, three new ministers – Deepak Burman from Falakata, Shankar Ghosh from Siliguri and Manoj Kumar Oraon from Kumargram in Alipurduar – took oath in the government’s expanded cabinet from north Bengal.
With Malati Rava Roy given a MoS berth (Independent Charge) and four others – Anandamay Burman from the Matigara-Naxalbari seat in Darjeeling district, Bishal Lama from Kalchini in Alipurduar, Koushik Chowdhury from Raiganj, and Biraj Biswas from Karandighi in Uttar Dinajpur – awarded MoS positions, the total count of ministers from north Bengal stood at nine.
North Bengal is a region where the BJP gained a decisive electoral edge over the Trinamool Congress, and from where sustained complaints of administrative neglect were made during the erstwhile Mamata Banerjee rule.
Compared to the erstwhile TMC ministry during its third term in power, where eight of the 43 ministers were from north Bengal, the overall picture of the Adhikari council looked like a minor improvement in terms of representation from the region.
Agnimitra Paul, MLA from Asansol Dakshin, who was earlier sworn in as a cabinet minister and entrusted with the Women and Child Welfare portfolio, would remain the lone woman representative in Adhikari’s cabinet.
Following Monday’s expansion, she would now have for colleagues Rava Roy as MoS with independent charge and four other women MLAs – Moumita Biswas Mishra from Bardhaman Dakshin, Purnima Chakraborty from Shyampukur, Gargi Das Ghosh from Kandi and Sumana Sarkar from Balagarh – as junior ministers.
The total count of women ministers in the Bengal BJP dispensation is six, lower than the nine women in Mamata Banerjee’s 2021 cabinet.
The expanded council currently comprises 14 ministers representing various ethnic groups of the state, 11 of whom were sworn in on Monday from the SC and ST categories.
The BJP inducted Deepak Burman, a SC MLA from Falakata, and Manoj Kumar Oraon, a tribal leader from Kumargram, both hailing from the Alipurduar district in north Bengal, in the state cabinet.
With Pramanik, a Rajbanshi leader and his cabinet colleagues, Matua leader Ashok Kirtania and tribal community representative Kshudiram Tudu, already sworn in as cabinet ministers, the total count of SC/ST leaders in the cabinet stood at five.
That apart, Rajesh Mahata, a leader of the SC Kudmi community from Gopiballavpur in Jhargram in the western part of Bengal, was inducted as a minister of state (Independent Charge).
Three BJP MLAs, representing the ST community, and six others from the SC group, were additionally awarded space as ministers of state, taking the total count of ministers representing backward castes to 15, nearly 37 per cent of the state’s ministers.
The oath-taking ceremony was held three weeks after Adhikari was sworn in as the CM on May 9 in the presence of PM Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the BJP’s central leadership and CMs of NDA-ruled states.
The cabinet expansion was expected this week as Adhikari and state BJP chief Samik Bhattacharya held meetings in New Delhi with the party’s central leadership last week about the induction of members in the council.
The May 9 swearing-in ceremony was held at the Brigade Parade Grounds after the BJP got 208 seats in the recently concluded polls, ending the TMC’s 15-year rule.
