West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is likely to take charge of the Finance Department in the reshuffle of the Council of Ministers. On the other hand, former Finance Minister Amit Mitra was appointed as the Chief Adviser to the Chief Minister and the Principal Chief Adviser of the Finance Department on Tuesday.
A notification issued by the government stated that Mr. Mitra would be entitled to the salary, allowances and allowances admissible to a cabinet minister. For the past one year, Mr. Mitra, who held the finance portfolio, has largely been working from home and did not contest the assembly elections this year and the bypolls that followed.
The chief minister holds the major portfolios of Home and Hill Affairs, Health, Minority Affairs, Information and Cultural Affairs.
Although the government has not issued a formal notification about the reshuffle till Tuesday evening, government sources said that no new minister is likely to be included in the council of ministers.
Minister Pulak Roy, who holds Public Health Engineering, is likely to be given the charge of Panchayat Department. Veteran TMC leader Subrata Mukherjee died on November 4, resulting in a vacancy in the department.
Senior TMC leader Manas Ranjan Bhunia, who is in charge of water resources, will be given additional responsibility of consumer affairs. According to government sources, Chandrima Bhattacharya is likely to be appointed as the Minister of State for Finance. She is the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Urban Development and Municipal Affairs.
MLAs took oath
During the day, four TMC MLAs, who won the recent bypolls, took oath in the assembly. The chief minister made important announcements in the assembly, including land acquisition for the Rs 10,000-crore Devcha-Pachami coal mine project in Birbhum.
“We will not do anything like what happened in Singur. We will start the project from government land. We are a public friendly government. We do not believe in doing things by force,” she said. He highlighted that compensation for land losers would include land and jobs.
The acquisition of land in Singur for Tata Motors’ small car project accelerated the decline of the Left and paved the way for Ms. Banerjee to come to power in 2011.
The chief minister also announced that “dwar ration (ration at doorstep)” – an election promise of the Trinamool Congress where beneficiaries of the public distribution scheme will get food grains at their doorsteps, will start from November 16.
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