West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Wednesday allocated the state’s finance department portfolio to former journalist Swapan Dasgupta and that of the industries and commerce department to Tapas Roy.
Swapan Dasgupta, elected from Kolkata’s Rashbehari Assembly constituency, holds a doctorate in history from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He joined the board of directors of Larsen & Toubro in 2015 as a nominee of the Administrator of the Specified Undertaking of the Unit Trust of India (SUUTI), a position he quit in 2016 when he was nominated to the Rajya Sabha.
After taking over as the state’s finance minister, Swapan Dasgupta said it is not necessarily important to be an economist to handle the finance department, and that he already has a broad idea of the state’s finances because of his current professional engagements.
As Bengal’s finance minister, 70-year-old Swapan Dasgupta will have the advantage of a friendly government at the Centre, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government. His predecessors since 1977, including CPI(M)’s Ashok Mitra and Asim Dasgupta and the Trinamool Congress’ Amit Mitra, rarely had the benefit of dealing with a friendly government at the Centre.
As finance minister, Swapan Dasgupta would also be assured of the Centre’s support in implementing schemes such as Ayushman Bharat and the rural employment guarantee programme. After taking charge, he said maximising revenue mobilisation without imposing fresh taxes would be a key challenge. He said he had undertaken a preliminary review of the state’s finances, was aware of the broad contours of the fiscal situation, and would hold consultations with stakeholders in the run-up to the budget exercise.
Tapas Roy, who switched to the BJP from the Trinamool Congress in 2024 and won the Maniktala Assembly seat in the polls that concluded last month, said his priority would be to restore investor confidence in Bengal.
“My priority will be to bring back the Tatas in a big way in the state,” he said, alluding to Tata Motors abandoning its Tata Nano plant in Singur in 2008 in the wake of protests led by Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee. On May 30, BJP state unit chief Samik Bhattacharya said the BJP government in Bengal would “bring Tata back”.
Trinamool Congress leaders, including Derek O’Brien and former state finance minister Amit Mitra, listed investments and expansions by various Tata Group companies in Bengal. They said the conglomerate already had a significant and growing footprint in the state.
The Bengal chief minister assigned Suri legislator and former general secretary of the state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Jagannath Chattopadhyay, the higher education department, while North Bengal leader Dipak Barman was given charge of school education. Sharadwat Mukherjee, a doctor by profession, was assigned the health department, while BJP veteran Dudh Kumar Mondal got charge of the agriculture department. Adhikari retained the home department.
