THREE NEW MINISTERS TO TAKE OATH AT 3 PM ON TUESDAY AT RAJ BHAWAN

Series of meetings held by BJP seniors gave the go ahead to the proposed expansion of the state cabinet with three new ministers. Three MLAs- all of them first time legislators -Ramprasad Paul, Bhagaban Das and Sushanta Chowdhury will be sworn in as Ministers on Tuesday at Raj Bhawan at 3 pm. Governor Satyadev Narayan Arya will administer them the oath of secrecy. Tripuranet.com had reported about the cabinet expansion and the name of the new ministers on Monday noon.

Though there was no official confirmation about the names of the new ministers as yet, it had, however, become known that Ram Prasad Paul, Susanta Choudhury and Bhagaban Das would be the new ministers. Among them Susanta Choudhury and Ram Prasad Paul are from West Tripura district while Bhagaban Das secured his berth in the cabinet from Unakoti district.

Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb finalized the new ministers keeping the 2023 polls in view. Meanwhile, apart from the introduction of the three new faces, some changes in the portfolios of the existing ministers were expected to take place.

One more name Mimi Majumdar, MLA from Badharghat also came up for discussion in the meeting.

In the meantime, a host of party  leaders including BJP national secretary Dilip Saikia, BJP North East Zonal secretary (organization) Ajay Jamwal, the party’s Tripura unit prabhari Vinod Sonkar and general secretary (Organization) Phanindranath Sarma arrived here in the state on Monday in a four-day trip to strengthen the party’s organizational base. They took part in the core committee meeting. Union Minister of State from Tripura Pratima Bhowmik also arrived here and joined the meeting.

The Chief Minister and other senior leaders also participated in the meeting to discuss important organizational matters.

Three berths in the Tripura cabinet were vacant from the beginning but the number had increased to four after Health minister Sudip Roy Barman was dropped from the council of ministers. However, one birth of the cabinet would remain vacant even after the three new ministers were inducted. 

Apart from Deb, the other members of the Tripura cabinet are- Jishnu Dev Verma (Deputy Chief Minister), N.C. Debbarma, Ratanlal Nath, Pranajit Singha Roy, Manoj Kanti Deb and Santana Chakma.