AGARTALA:
The newly appointed Chief Minister of Tripura, Manik Saha, formed his new cabinet with full strength of 12 members with no major changes except former Tribal Welfare Minister Mevar Kumar Jamatia, who was replaced by IPFT MLA Prem Kumar Reang, with the only vacant seat going to Rampada Jamatia.
The swearing-in ceremony of Saha took place on May 15, and party sources have revealed that the oath-taking ceremony for the new council of ministers will be held on May 16 at the Raj Bhavan.
After the 2018 election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) did not fill up all the cabinet posts and only nine out of 12 were sworn in. When Health Minister Sudip Roy Barman was dropped from the cabinet within a year and a half, the cabinet strength was reduced to eight.
Later in 2021, three new faces were inducted into the Biplab Kumar Deb cabinet, and they included Sushanta Chowdhury, Ram Prasad Paul, and Bhagaban Chandra Das.
All the BJP MLAs who became ministers in the Biplab Deb cabinet were once again inducted into the new council of ministers while there was a change in the case of IPFT, where its president NC Debbarma was inducted but not Jamatia, who was replaced by Reang.
With Rampada Jamatia’s entry into the cabinet, BJP’s strength increased from nine to ten in the twelve-member cabinet.