Bengal portfolios: Mamata keeps home, retains Mitra as finance minister

Kolkata: Retaining key portfolios of home and health with herself, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday didn’t make any major changes in allotment of portfolios of various ministries. Cabinet minister Amit Mitra has retained the charge of finance, commerce and industries, excise, industrial reconstruction and public enterprise, the chief minister announced after the first cabinet meeting at the state secretariat. [caption id=“attachment_2803156” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The chief minister herself will be in charge of a number of departments like home, health and family welfare, hill affairs, land and land reforms, information and cultural affairs, minorities affairs. PTI[/caption] Suvendu Adhikari, a new face in the cabinet, will now be the transport minister while former Indian cricketer Laxmi Ratan Shukla, a first-time MLA, will be minister of state for sports and youth affairs. The chief minister herself will be in charge of a number of departments like home, health and family welfare, hill affairs, land and land reforms, information and cultural affairs, minorities affairs and Madrasah education, micro small scale enterprises, personnel and administrative reforms. Partha Chatterjee will continue to hold the ministries of school education, higher education and parliamentary affairs while Subrata Mukherjee will remain the minister for panchayat and rural development and public health engineering. Goutam Deb will be the new in-charge of tourism which the CM said is a priority area for the government. Among the new faces, Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay will hold the portfolio of power and non-conventional energy sources, Abani Mohan Joarder in correctional administration, refugee, relief and rehabilitation, Abdur Rezzak Mollah in food processing and horticulture. Sovan Chatterjee, also the Mayor of Kolkata, is also a new inductee who will hold the ministries of fire and emergency rpt emergency, housing and environment. Four ministers who had lost in the assembly polls will be reinstated in their departments in the rank of a minister by the government, Banerjee said. Chandrima Bhattacharya, former minister of state for health and law and judicial affairs, former power minister Manish Gupta, former PWD minister Sankar Chakraborty and former backward class welfare minister Upendranath Biswas will get a new position in their own departments. Popular Bengali singer Indranil Sen, who had won polls on a Trinamool ticket, will be the new minister of state for information and cultural affairs. Rabindranath Ghosh, also a new face, will be the north Bengal development minister and Churamani Mahato in backward class welfare. Siddiqullah Choudhury will be the minister of state with independent charge in mass education, library and parliamentary affairs. Bratya Basu, who was in charge of tourism earlier, has now been given the charge of IT and electronics. The chief minister said they have made IT a separate department to give special focus on it. Urban development and municipal affairs will remain with Firhad Hakim, agriculture with Purnendu Basu, forest with Binay Krishna Burman, Sundarbans development with Manturam Pakhira. Aroop Biswas will hold PWD, youth affairs and sports while Sashi Panja will be in women development and social welfare and child development. She will also hold the charge of health and family welfare as a minister of state with independent charge. Bachchu Hansda will be MoS for north bengal development, Sandhyarani Tudu in backward class welfare, Asima Patra in technical education department as independent charge. Moloy Ghatak will retain the portfolio of labour, law and judicial services.