West Bengal Minister Babul Supriyo's dig at BJP: 'My 2nd innings will be brighter than the first'

Babul Supriyo is among the eight new faces in the Mamata Banerjee cabinet, who were sworn in at the Raj Bhavan on Wednesday.

Kolkata: West Bengal's new Tourism and Information Technology Minister Babul Supriyo has taken a dig at the ruling BJP at the Centre and said that his second innings with the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government will be much brighter than the one he had as a central minister in the Narendra Modi-led NDA government. Supriyo, who had resigned from the BJP last year, thanked Trinamool Congress supremo and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for giving him her support.

"I really have no idea about this coincidence (August 3). Yes, life has definitely come full circle. It was last year in August when I left (BJP), and today I am sworn in as a minister of the West Bengal government,” he said on Wednesday.

Supriyo is among the eight new faces in the Mamata Banerjee cabinet, who were sworn in at the Raj Bhavan on Wednesday. “It's a poetic justice that came through Didi's (Banerjee's) hand. Because I had quit politics, and it was she who had encouraged me, infused courage in me and nominated me as a candidate for the Ballygunge constituency and then the entire party supported me," Supriyo said.

Sometime after he was dropped from the Union cabinet during a reshuffle last year, Supriyo had announced that he was quitting politics but was later persuaded against resigning as a Lok Sabha member. However, the singer-turned-politician joined TMC in September.

"I will work hard for the development of the people of West Bengal. I will give everything whatever I have learnt from my earlier experiences as a central minister and make my second innings brighter,” he said

Supriyo, who won the Asansol Lok Sabha seat in the 2019 polls by a huge margin of 1.97 lakh votes, questioned why a Bengali MP would not be made a full-time Union minister despite giving his everything for the party. He was a Union minister of state.

"I might have made some mistakes but I had given everything of mine (as the central minister) since 2014. I believe I was ill-treated. Why can't anyone from West Bengal be a full-time Union minister? I did not take it lying down," he said.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday carried out a major reshuffle of her cabinet dropping four ministers, as nine people including Babul Supriyo, former BJP central minister, were sworn in.

Banerjee changed the portfolios of nearly half the members of the ministerial council in one of the biggest reshuffles of the cabinet since her party, the Trinamool Congress, came to power for the first time in the state in 2011.

The first ministerial rejig since the TMC stormed back to power for the third consecutive term in May last year, came when the party is facing a crisis over the arrest of senior minister Partha Chatterjee by the ED over the school jobs scam last month. Supriyo was allocated Information Technology and Electronics, one of the departments held by Chatterjee. The singer-turned-politician also got the Tourism portfolio.

Sashi Panja and Sovandeb Chattopadhyay were given the charge of Industry and Commerce and Parliamentary Affairs departments respectively, portfolios which were earlier with Chatterjee who was suspended by the party after his arrest. Satyajit Barman was made the new Minister of State in the Education department, replacing Paresh Adhikary. The latter whose name also cropped up in the scam was shunted out.

Besides Supriyo, four others - Udayan Guha, Partha Bhowmick, Snehasis Chakraborty and Pradip Mazumdar - were sworn in as cabinet ministers by Governor La Ganesan.