AGARTALA: Three new faces - Ram Prasad Paul, Sushanta Chowdhury, Bhagaban Chandra Das - were on Tuesday inducted into the Tripura cabinet in its first expansion after the BJP-IPFT alliance assumed office in March, 2018 after defeating the Left parties in the assembly polls.
Governor Satyadeo Narain Arya administered the oath of office and secrecy to Paul, Chowdhury and Das at a function in Raj Bhavan, where Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb, his council of ministers and other dignitaries, including Union Minister from Tripura, Pratima Bhowmik and four central BJP leaders were present.
Chowdhury (42) was elected to the assembly in the 2018 polls for the first time from western Tripura. Das is the saffron party's northern Tripura leader who was also elected to the assembly for the first time.
"With the elevation of 47-year-old Das, the long awaited demand for a minister belonging to the Scheduled Caste (SC) community was fulfilled. Those BJP MLAs who were not accommodated in the cabinet would be the chairpersons from among the 31 Public Sector Undertakings and Corporations," a top party leader said on Tuesday.
Amidst open resentment by a section of the ruling BJP MLAs and leaders in Tripura, the cabinet expansion took place on Tuesday afternoon even as the dissident MLAs and BJP leaders boycotted the swearing-in-ceremony. The leaders of the opposition Left parties and the Congress also did not attend the oath-taking ceremony.
The BJP leader, refusing to be named, said that eyeing the 2023 assembly election in Tripura, the Bharatiya Janata Party was further activating governance and the party organisation cross the State.
Since the BJP-IPFT (Indigenous People's Front of Tripura) government assumed office on March 9, 2018, three ministerial berths were lying vacant and in May 2019, former Health and Information Technology Minister Sudip Roy Barman was sacked following differences with the Chief Minister and the vacancies in the ministry rose to four.
Amidst dissidence by a section of the ruling BJP MLAs and leaders since 2019, four senior central party leaders arrived in the State on Monday for a week-long visit to quill the internal disputes and also to plug the shortcomings, both in the government and the organization. (IANS)
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