New Delhi: The Suvendu Adhikari-led government in West Bengal underwent a major cabinet expansion on Monday, with 35 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators taking oath as ministers. The swearing-in ceremony was conducted by Governor R. N. Ravi at Lok Bhavan.
The expansion comes three weeks after Suvendu Adhikari was sworn in as Chief Minister on May 9 following the BJP’s decisive victory in the state assembly elections. The party secured 208 seats in the 294-member West Bengal Assembly, ending the 15-year rule of the Trinamool Congress led by Mamata Banerjee.
With the induction of 35 new ministers, the state cabinet now has 41 members, just three short of the maximum permissible strength for the assembly.
Among those sworn in as cabinet ministers were BJP leaders Swapan Dasgupta, Tapas Roy, Arjun Singh, Jagannath Chattopadhyay, Saradwat Mukherjee, Deepak Burman, Manoj Oraon, Dudh Kumar Mondal, Gouri Shankar Ghosh, and Shankar Ghosh.
Three BJP legislators—Rajesh Mahata, Indranil Khan, and Malati Rava Roy—were sworn in as Ministers of State (Independent Charge). Several other MLAs, including Santanu Pramanik, Purnima Chakraborty, Umesh Rai, Joyel Murmu, Ashok Dinda, Anandamoy Burman, Kaushik Chowdhury, Gargi Das Ghosh, Bhaskar Bhattacharya, Dibakar Gharami, and Sumana Sarkar, took oath as Ministers of State.
The cabinet expansion follows consultations between Adhikari, state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya, and the party’s central leadership in New Delhi. The move is seen as an effort to strengthen governance and ensure wider regional representation in the newly formed BJP government.
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