Tripura Chief Minister Dr Manik Saha on Friday allocated three departments, including Higher Education, to newly inducted minister Kishor Barman, who took oath as a cabinet minister on July 3.

Tripura Chief Secretary Jitendra Kumar Sinha, in a notification, said that the Tripura Governor, on the advice of the Chief Minister, allocated the three departments to Barman with immediate effect.

According to the notification, the Panchayat, Higher Education and General Administration (political) departments were allocated to Barman. All three departments were earlier kept with the Chief Minister.

Barman, former state General Secretary of the ruling BJP, said that he is very happy after getting three important departments and thanked the Chief Minister for allocating these vital departments.

“I got the opportunity to work for the development of education and welfare, and the development of people residing in the Gram Panchayats. I always loved to work with the people and for their wellbeing,” the minister told.

Barman, 45, a first-time MLA, belongs to the ruling BJP. He earlier worked in the North Bengal (West Bengal) BJP organisation and came to Tripura in 2018. Barman won the 2023 Assembly polls from Nalchar Assembly constituency in Sepahijala district.

With the induction of Barman, Chief Minister Saha on July 3, did the second expansion of his cabinet after the formation of the second BJP government in March 2023.

On March 7 last year, two Tipra Motha MLAs -- Animesh Debbarma and Brishaketu Debbarma -- were inducted into the ministry.

On March 8, 2023, the BJP and Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) coalition government led by Saha came to power for the second consecutive term.

Tipra-Motha, headed by former royal scion Pradyot Kishore Debbarma, contested the 2023 Assembly polls separately but in March last year, after signing a tripartite agreement with the Centre and the Tripura government, joined the BJP-IPFT coalition government, adding a new twist to Tripura politics.

The IPFT currently has one minister, Sukla Charan Noatia, in the council of the ministry. The BJP-IPFT alliance had retained power in Tripura by winning 33 seats in the 60-member Assembly. The BJP alone secured 32 seats while the IPFT managed one seat in the 2023 Assembly polls.

Motha, which contested the Assembly elections in 2023 for the first time, won 13 seats of the 42 seats it contested, emerging as the second largest party after the BJP.

The Motha and the IPFT are both tribal based parties. The CPI (M) won 11 seats in the last Assembly elections (2023) while the Congress got three. The Left parties and the Congress had a seat-sharing arrangement for the elections.