Babul Supriyo joins Mamata’s team as cabinet minister, eight others take oath

Seven ministers, including former BJP MP Babul Supriyo, took oath on Wednesday as ministers in the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government. Two others were sworn in as ministers with independent charges.

Besides Supriyo, the other MLAs who took oath as ministers were Snehasis Chakraborty, Partha Bhowmick, Udayan Guha, Pradip Mazumder, Tajmul Hossain, Satyajit Barman. Birbaha Hansda and Biplab Roy Chowdhury were sworn in as ministers with independent charges.

Banerjee had said on Monday that she will go in for a cabinet reshuffle on Wednesday.

The cabinet reshuffle, the first since the Trinamool Congress stormed back to power for the third consecutive term last year, comes amid rising heat over the arrest of senior minister Partha Chatterjee by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the school jobs scam case.

Supriyo is 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. He is now an MLA of the ruling camp from the Ballygunge assembly constituency in Kolkata. Speculations were rife about his joining the Babul Supriyo.