Mamata Banerjee announces cabinet reshuffle after Partha Chatterjee`s sacking

`We will reshuffle the cabinet on Wednesday, there will be four-five new faces,` said Mamata Banerjee.

New Delhi: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday (August 1, 2022) announced that there will be a cabinet reshuffle in the state on Wednesday. Mamata indicated that at least four new faces can be expected to be recruited. The announcement comes almost a week after Partha Chatterjee was arrested in the school jobs case and later suspended from his post of state minister.

Banerjee said they don't plan to dissolve the entire cabinet and form a new one. “We don't have plan to dissolve the whole ministry & form a new one. Yes, there will be a reshuffle. We lost ministers Subrata Mukherjee and Sadhan Pande. Partha is in jail so all their work has to be done. Not possible for me to handle alone,” said Mamata Banerjee.

This comes soon after former minister Partha Chatterjee was arrested by Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the 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 took charge of the departments on Thursday after his arrest. Banerjee now holds charge of 11 departments, including the four held by Partha Chatterjee.

West Bengal CM also announced that seven new districts will be carved out in the state very soon. Murshidabad, Nadia and North 24 Parganas will be the ones that will be divided into seven districts. “Earlier there were 23 districts in Bengal now it has been increased to 30. The 7 new districts include - Sunderban, Ichhemati, Ranaghat, Bishnupur, Jangipur, Behrampur and one more district will be named in Basirhat,” said Mamata Banerjee.

Earlier, the Banerjee-led TMC government in Bengal has come under severe criticism after the probe agency's raid unearthed piles of cash from multiple properties owned by Partha Chatterjee's 30-year-old aide. Following this the state government on July 28 sacked Partha Chatterjee from his ministerial role after he was arrested by the ED.