President Md Abdul Hamid administers oath to three ministers — (from left) Mustafa Jabbar, Narayon Chandra Chanda and A K M Shajahan Kamal — at a ceremony at Bangabhaban on Tuesday evening. — BSS Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expanded on Tuesday her cabinet inducting three new faces in it and promoting a state minister to a full one, report agencies.
They all took oath at Bangabhaban Tuesday evening. President Abdul Hamid administered oath to them at 6:30pm.
Of them, Narayan Chandra Chanda, AKM Shahjahan Kamal, an MP from Laxmipur-3 constituency, and IT expert Mustafa Jabbar were sworn in as ministers while Rajbari-1 MP Kazi Keramat Ali was sworn in as a state minister.
Narayan Chandra was made full minister from State Minister for Fisheries and Livestock.
Chanda, 72, elected MP from Khulna-5 three times, had been serving as a state minister since 2014, when the Awami League took office for the second term.
IT entrepreneur Jabbar is a technocrat minister as he is not elected to parliament.
The 68-year-old now heads the Bangladesh Association for Software and Information Services or BASIS and is well known for developing the first Bangla keyboard 'Bijoy'.
Keramat has been elected from Rajbari-1 for the fourth time in 2014. The 63-year-old presided over the parliamentary standing committee on the cultural affairs ministry.
Laxmipur-3 MP Shajahan is serving as the president of the ruling party's district unit.
With the latest inclusion, the Awami League government has now a cabinet of 53 members with 33 ministers, 17 state minister and two deputy ministers.
In past two years, speculations on a cabinet reshuffle were heard several times, but Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina brought no major changes to the council of ministers.
The Awami League government started its second term by forming a cabinet of 49 members on Jan 12, 2014.
Among them, 29 were ministers, 17 state ministers and two were deputy ministers.
After another one and a half months, AH Mahmood Ali was sworn in as foreign minister. Mohammad Nazrul Islam became state minister for water resources at the time.
In October the same year, Abdul Latif Siddique lost his place in the cabinet for his comments on the Hajj.
On July 9 the next year, Hasina fired the then Awami League general secretary Syed Ashraful Islam as LGRD minister.
Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, in charge of expatriates welfare and overseas ministry at the time, became LGRD minister.
The next week, Chittagong Awami League leader Nurul Islam BSc was made a minister while Tarana Halim and Nuruzzaman Ahmed became state minister.
The then state ministers Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and Yeafesh Osman were elevated the same day.
Hasina gave Syed Ashraf the charge of public administration ministry after two more days on July 16 that year.
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