KOLKATA: In a major political development marking the consolidation of the new administration in West Bengal, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari significantly expanded his council of ministers on Monday. Thirty-five BJP legislators took the oath of office during an official ceremony.
Governor RN Ravi administered the oath to the newly inducted ministers at a programme held at the Lok Bhavan. This extensive expansion comes exactly three weeks after the 55-year-old Adhikari was originally sworn in as Chief Minister on May 9, following a historic election where the BJP secured 208 seats in the 294-member assembly, ending the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress’s 15-year rule.
Expanded Cabinet Dynamics and Scale
The structural scaling of the new state executive sets the administrative framework for the incoming government:
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Approaching the Constitutional Cap: With the induction of these 35 legislators, the total strength of the West Bengal cabinet has risen to 41. This leaves the government just three ministers short of the maximum permissible legal limit for the 294-member state assembly.
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Founding Core: Prior to Monday’s expansion, the cabinet consisted of a lean core team that took the oath alongside Adhikari on May 9, which included Dilip Ghosh, Agnimitra Paul, Nisith Pramanik, Ashok Kirtania, and Kshudiram Tudu.
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High-Level Consultation: The expansion follow-through succeeded high-level strategic deliberations in New Delhi last week, where Chief Minister Adhikari and state BJP chief Samik Bhattacharya met with the party’s central leadership to finalize the ministerial list.
Key Ministerial Inductions and Portfolios
The newly sworn-in members have been divided across three tiers of governance within the council of ministers:
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Cabinet Ministers: Prominent lawmakers sworn in with full cabinet rank include Swapan Dasgupta, Tapas Roy, Shankar Ghosh, Dudh Kumar Mondal, Deepak Burman, Manoj Oraon, Gouri Shankar Ghosh, Arjun Singh, Saradwat Mukherjee, and Jagannath Chattopadhyay.
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Ministers of State (Independent Charge): State MLAs Rajesh Mahata, Indranil Khan, and Malati Rava Roy took their oaths to head departments with independent charge.
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Ministers of State (MoS): The tier of junior ministers includes Santanu Pramanik, Purnima Chakraborty, Umesh Rai, Joyel Murmu, Ashok Dinda, Anandamoy Burman, Kaushik Chowdhury, Gargi Das Ghosh, Bhaskar Bhattacharya, Dibakar Gharami, and Sumana Sarkar.
