Didi rejigs cabinet, sends perform-or-perish signal

KOLKATA: Partha Chatterjee, the official number 2 in Mamata Banerjee’s cabinet, slid a few notches down the hierarchy on Thursday, losing the high-priority industry portfolio to his colleague and finance minister Amit Mitra.

In a stunning move meant to send out a perform-or-perish signal to her ministers, the CM reassigned industry and industrial reconstruction to Mitra as additional responsibility , leaving Chatterjee with only IT and parliamentary affairs. “From now, no one should take the performance review meeting lightly,” a Trinamool minister said after the reshuffle.

Senior officials saw Chatterjee’s demotion as a consequence of under performance on the industry front. Pulled up by Mamata in the last two performance meetings, Chatterjee was reluctant to take up unpleasant but pertinent issues with the CM and the finance minister. Mamata made it clear to her once blue-eyed minister his performance was falling far short of expectations.