KOLKATA: Former Union minister Babul Supriyo is among the eight new faces who will be inducted into the Bengal government helmed by Mamata Banerjee.
Supriyo was with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) before switching allegiance to TMC last year after being dropped from the Modi cabinet. The famous singer now represents the Ballygunge constituency in the Bengal Legislative constituency.
On Monday, the Bengal Chief minister announced that she will be expanding her cabinet. The move comes after a tumultuous period when one of her senior party leaders Partha Chatterjee was sent to Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody following his alleged involvement in the multi-crore teachers’ recruitment scheme.
Sources in Trinamool Congress (TMC) said that Supriyo, Snehashish Chakraborty, Partha Bhowmik, Udayan Guha, Pradip Majumder, Biplab Roy Chowdhury, Tajmul Hossain and Satyajit Burman are likely to be inducted in the cabinet.
Beer Baha Hazda, who is already a minister in the current cabinet, likely to be given additional charges.
The new ministers will be taking oath in Raj Bhawan at 4 pm today.
Earlier on Monday, Banerjee said “We don’t have plans to break the entire ministry and form a new one, but yes, there will be a reshuffle. We lost ministers like Subrata Mukherjee and Sadhan Pande, and Partha Chatterjee is in jail. Someone has to do their work and it is not possible for me to look at everything alone. Four to five new faces will be inducted into the Cabinet on Wednesday.”