Modi halves representation of West Bengal in his new council of ministers

Kolkata: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s council of ministers will now have lesser representation from West Bengal, where the Bharatiya Janata Party’s performance in the Lok Sabha elections failed to meet his high expectations.

After Modi was sworn in as the prime minister for the third term at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Shantanu Thakur and Sukanta Majumdar, who won from the Bangaon and Balurghat constituencies of West Bengal, took oath to be the ministers of state in the National Democratic Alliance government.

Majumdar, the president of the West Bengal unit of the BJP, is one of the new faces inducted into the council of ministers. The BJP may now appoint a new chief of its West Bengal unit to rejuvenate the party’s organisation in the state, where it was able to win in only 12 of the 42 Lok Sabha constituencies, six less than its 2019 tally.

Thakur was already a minister of state for ports, shipping, and waterways in the last government headed by Modi. He again took oath as the minister of state on Sunday.

Modi’s last council of ministers had four representatives of West Bengal – Thakur, Nishith Pramanik, John Barla, and Subhas Sarkar. Barla was not fielded by the BJP this time, while Pramanik and Sarkar lost the polls. Thakur could retain his Lok Sabha seat though.

Thakur, who was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 2019, leads one of the warring factions of the All India Matua Mahasangh – the apex body of the Matuas, who had migrated from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to India.

The BJP has been competing with the Trinamool Congress to turn the community into a loyal vote bank. The announcement about the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act just before the Lok Sabha polls helped Thakur retain his support base among the Matuas in Bangaon, one of the constituencies where the votes of the community can decide the fate of the candidate.

Majumdar took over as the president of the West Bengal unit of the BJP in September 2021. The former ‘pracharak’ of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has a PhD in botany and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Balurghat in north Bengal in 2019.