Mamata Sworn in as West Bengal CM, Over 30,000 Attend the Ceremony

Kolkata: Mamata Banerjee on Friday was sworn in as the Chief Minister of West Bengal for the second consecutive time.

Banerjee was administered oath of office and secrecy by state Governor Keshri Nath Tripathi. Her ministry has 18 new faces.

The prominent cabinet ministers who took oath along with Banerjee were Amit Mitra, Partha Chatterjee, Subrata Mukherjee, Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, Abani Joardar, Firhad Hakim, Arup Roy, Gautam Deb, Sovan Chatterjee, Javed Khan, Abdur Rezzak Mollah, Suvendu Adhikari, Jyotipriya Mullick, Purnendu Bose, Rabindra Nath Ghosh, Bratya Basu, Santiram Mahato, Ashis Banerjee, Arup Biswas.

The ministers of state who were sworn in, included cricketer Lakshmi Ratan Shukla and singer Indranil Sen.

The 18 new faces in the council of ministers are Suvendu Adhikari, Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, Churamoni Mahato, Tapan Dasgupta, Asima Patra, Indranil Sen, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Shyamal Santra, Golam Rabbani, Siddikullah Chowdhury, Abdur Rezzak Mollah, Jakir Hossain, James Kujur, Rabindra Nath Ghosh, Sandhyarani Tudu, Abani Joardar, Bachchu Hansda and Sovan Chatterjee, who is also the Mayor of Kolkata.

Over 30,000 people attended the swearing-in ceremony at Red Road in central Kolkata. Among them were Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar, RJD chief Lalu Prasad, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah and DMK leader Kanimozhi.

Banerjee is the daughter of freedom fighter Promileswar Banerjee. She came into limelight in 1984 by defeating CPI (M) stalwart Somnath Chatterjee from Jadavpur constituency in her maiden Lok Sabha election contest.

In 1991, she joined former prime minister PV Narasimha Rao's ministry. In 1993, she parted her ways with Rao’s ministry.

In 1998 she quit the Congress and formed the Trinamool Congress (TMC) to take on the Left in West Bengal.

Since then she has been fighting against the Left. From 1998 to 2001 she also joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). She was the railway minister from 1999 to 2001 and coal minister for a few months in 2004 in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.

In May 2011, Mamata finally managed to oust the Left Front government from the state.