
In a Cabinet expansion just three weeks after taking charge, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Monday expanded the Bengal Council of Ministers to 41, by inducting 35 new members. This is said to be part of the BJP s effort to balance regional, caste, and gend... In a Cabinet expansion just three weeks after taking charge, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Monday expanded the Bengal Council of Ministers to 41, by inducting 35 new members. This is said to be part of the BJP’s effort to balance regional, caste, and gender representation in its first government in the state. Of the 35 new ministers sworn in by the Governor R N Ravi at the Lok Bhavan, 13 were inducted as Cabinet Ministers, three as Ministers of State with Independent Charge, and 19 as Ministers of State. The 294-member West Bengal Assembly can have three more members in its Cabinet. On Monday, thirteen leaders were sworn in as Cabinet Ministers, including Tapash Roy, Dipak Burman, Shankar Ghosh, Arjun Singh, Manoj Oraon, Gouri Shankar Ghosh, Jagannath Chattopadhyay, Swapan Dasgupta, Kalyan Chakraborty, Anup Kumar Das, Ajay Kumar Poddar, Sharadwat Mukhopadhyay, and Dudh Kumar Mondol. Nineteen legislators were inducted as Ministers of State, including Ashok Dinda, Umesh Roy, Koushik Chowdhury, Kalita Maji, Moumita Biswas Misra, Gargi Ghosh Das, Dipankar Jana, Purnima Chakraborty, Bishal Lama, Harikrishna Bera, Anandamoy Burman, Shantanu Pramanik, Biraj Biswas, Amiya Kisku, Juyel Murmu, Bhaskar Bhattacharya, Dibakar Gharami, Sumana Sarkar and Nadiar Chand Bouri. Malati Rava Roy, Indranil Khan, and Rajesh Mahato took oath as Ministers of State (Independent Charge). Earlier on May 9, apart from the CM, five other Cabinet Ministers were sworn-in, including Union Minister-turned-state leader Nisith Pramanik, Agnimitra Paul, Dilip Ghosh, Ashok Kirtania, and Kshudiram Tudu. The election of Rathindra Ghosh as Speaker further strengthened North Bengal’s representation in the new government. With this, of the BJP’s 41 Council of Ministers in West Bengal, six are women, as opposed to nine women ministers in the previous TMC Cabinet. As for the representation from various castes, the BJP Cabinet now has four tribal ministers and eight Scheduled Castes ministers. Additionally, nine ministers hail from north Bengal, increasing the representation of the region in the BJP government. 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 Suvendu’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, has been inducted as Minister of State. Ghosh had joined the BJP in March 2021, just before the Assembly elections that year, when he was elected as an MLA from the Siliguri Assembly constituency. He had then defeated TMC’s Omprakash Mishra by a margin of 35,586 votes.