West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is likely to take over the Finance department in a reshuffle of the Council of Ministers. And former Finance Minister Amit Mitra was on Tuesday appointed as Principal Chief Adviser to the Chief Minister and the Finance department.
A notification issued by the government said Mr. Mitra shall be entitled to emoluments, allowances and perks as admissible to a Cabinet Minister. Over the past one year, Mr. Mitra, who held the Finance portfolio, has been largely working from home and he did not contest this year Assembly polls and the subsequent bypolls.
The Chief Minister holds the key portfolios of Home and Hill Affairs, Health, Minority Affairs, Information and Cultural Affairs among others.
While the government has not issued a formal notification about the reshuffle till Tuesday evening, sources in the government informed that no new Minister is likely to be been inducted in the Council of Ministers.
Minister Pulak Roy, who holds Public Health Engineering, is likely to be given charge of the Panchayat department. Veteran TMC leader Subrata Mukherjee death on November 4 had resulted in the vacancy in the department.
Senior TMC leader Manas Ranjan Bhuniya, who is in charge of Water Resources will be given the additional responsibility of Consumer Affairs. According to sources in the government, Chandrima Bhattacharya is likely to be appointed Minister of State of Finance. She is the Minister of State (Independent charge) for Urban Development & Municipal Affairs.
MLAs sworn in
During the day, four TMC legislators, who won the recent bypolls, were sworn in the Assembly. The Chief Minister made important announcements in the Assembly, including land acquisition for ₹10,000 crore Deocha-Pachami coal mine project in Birbhum.
“We will not do anything like what happened in Singur . We will start the project with government-owned land. We are a pro-people government. We don’t believe in doing things by force,” she said. She highlighted that compensation for the land losers would involve land and jobs.
The land acquisition at Singur for the Tata Motors small car project hastened the fall of the Left parties and catapulted Ms. Banerjee’s rise to power in 2011.
The Chief Minister also announced that “duare ration (ration at the doorsteps)”- a poll promise of the Trinamool Congress where beneficiaries of the Public Distribution Scheme will get grains at their doorsteps, will start from November 16.
