Mamata Banerjee to trim Cabinet, merge departments

Kolkata: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee is planning to reduce the number of departments of her Cabinet by merging some of them and bringing  them under a broad umbrella.

According to a top official of the state secretariat, Ms Banerjee will truncate her  ministerial departments to 50-52 from the existing 63. The decision is expected to be effective by the beginning of 2017. The chief minister believes a trimming of the huge council of ministers will “speed up development process”.

On being questioned whether some cabinet ministers will lose their portfolio, if the departments are merged, the Nabanna official said,” The chief minister and the CMO have not discussed anything about some ministers losing their portfolios. But if the number of departments are reduced then it is obvious that some wings are going to be clipped.”

A bureaucrat considered close to the chief minister said that Ms Banerjee had directed  chief secretary Basudeb Banerjee three months ago to prepare a list of departments that can be clubbed into a single and broader department. . “The chief secretary completed the assignment given to him his by end November and Ms Banerjee would have taken a final call on the decision in December itself. However, the demonetisation decision by the Centre has delayed the matter,”  the official said

 According to sources, departments like technical education, mass education, madrasa education, bio technology et al may be brought under one broad umbrella. Disaster management which is now a separate department may be again clubbed with the fire department. Departments like agri marketing and food processing may be merged under the broad head of agriculture.

“All these departments are closely linked with one another but because they are being handled by different ministers, the movement of files from one department to another is slow. The chief minister wants to put an end to this,” the official said.

In principle, Ms Banerjee is opposed to a large council of ministers. In fact, she had often criticised Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s huge cabinet. Before coming to power, she would assert that she will preside over a smaller council of ministers. However, her party won such a massive landslide that it became difficult for her to decide which MLA to include in or drop from her ministry.  

Apart from bringing down the number of ministerial departments, the New Year is expected to witness some reshuffle of departmental secretaries.