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| Safwi (top) and Manna |
Calcutta, March 14: The government today swapped the departments of co-operation minister Haider Aziz Safwi and correctional homes minister Shankar Chakraborty because Mamata Banerjee was “unhappy” with Safwi for “failing to grasp legal complexities”, leading to problems in a co-operatives case, sources said.
Sources said the chief minister had also decided to give junior agriculture minister Becharam Manna the additional portfolio of minister-of-state, agri-marketing. “Becharam has been working hard in his role as MoS, touring the districts and taking on the CPM. It is a reward for him,” a source said.
Sources said the chief minister had sent the recommendations to Raj Bhavan. “A notification will be issued soon,” a senior official said.
According to Trinamul sources, Mamata was unhappy with Safwi after the government ran into trouble with Calcutta High Court while trying to reduce the tenure of co-operative boards from five to three years. Most of the 2,000 elected co-operative boards are run by the Left Front.
After the high court quashed the order, the government promulgated an ordinance to reduce the tenure of the cooperative boards, but that too has been challenged in court. A bill to the same effect has now been placed in the ongoing budget session of the Assembly.
“Mamatadi felt Safwi, a retired IPS officer, could not grasp the legal complexities and that was leading to problems. Shankar Chakraborty is a veteran lawyer and could be more conversant with the legal aspects of running the department,” a senior Trinamul minister said.
During a ministry shuffle in November, Safwi was relieved of the inland water transport department.
This is the fifth ministry shuffle during the 21-month tenure of the Mamata government. Rabindranath Bhattacharya fell foul of the chief minister after he was shifted from the agriculture department to the less important statistics and programme implementation department in November. He has refused to join his new assignment.
In January 2012, Mamata brought Subrata Mukherjee to the panchayat and rural development department, replacing Chandranath Sinha. The minister of state for health, Chandrima Bhattacharya, was given additional responsibility as minister of state in the law department. She was later given independent charge of the law department.
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