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Singer-turned politician Babul Supriyo, who crossed over from the BJP to the TMC, was among nine leaders sworn in as ministers in the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government on Wednesday.
Apart from Supriyo, Snehasis Chakraborty, Partha Bhowmick, Udayan Guha, Pradip Mazumder, Tajmul Hossain, and Satyajit Barman took oath as Cabinet ministers. Birbaha Hansda and Biplab Roy Chowdhury were sworn in as state Ministers with independent charge. Supriyo earlier has been a union minister in the Narendra Modi-led central government. However, he left the BJP to join the TMC. This was the first cabinet reshuffle since Mamata Banerjee again stormed to power in the West Bengal after the 2021 assembly polls. The reshuffle also comes in the backdrop of the removal of senior TMC leader Partha Chatterjee from the cabinet. Chatterjee was relieved of ministerial duties after his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the masssive SSC recruitment scam case. Chatterjee was minister-in-charge of the departments of industry, commerce and enterprises, IT and electronics, parliamentary affairs and public enterprises, and industrial reconstruction. CM Banerjee had taken charge of the departments held by Chatterjee last week. Chief Minister Banerjee had earlier said that there will be 4-5 new faces. She had also said that she alone could not take care of so many departments. The reshuffle also comes at a time when the state BJP has been attacking the ruling TMC accusing it of massive corruption in the school teacher recruitment scam. West Bengal BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar, while referring to the arrest of Chatterjee, had alleged that Banerjee's cabinet reshuffle was an attempt to divert the media's attention from the corruption cases in West Bengal. "Due to the corruption cases that are coming to the fore in West Bengal, the people of Bengal have understood that the entire government is a thief. The thief will go and another new thief will come and he will start stealing again with his new energy, nothing much is going to change," he claimed while speaking to ANI. The TMC has also hit out at the BJP claiming efforts were being made to tarnish the state government's image. (ANI)
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