At
35, Nisith Pramanik from West Bengal is the youngest member of PM Narendra
Modi’s Cabinet. The Trinamool Congress (TMC)-turned-BJP leader is also the first-ever
Central Minister from Cooch Behar, the seat he won in 2019.

Pramanik
was one of the 43 leaders who were inducted into the ministry on Wednesday in
the first major reshuffle of Narendra Modi’s second term as PM.

This bearded, long-haired leader from
West Bengal, which saw Mamata Banerjee returning to power after a
bitterly-fought contest with the BJP, is a vocal critic of the state government
and wields considerable influence in North Bengal.

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In 2019, Pramanik contested the Lok
Sabha elections for the first time and won by a comfortable margin. The BJP
also fielded him in this year’s assembly election from Dinhata, which he won by
a mere 57 votes. But he later resigned his MLA seat and retained the Lok Sabha
seat.

Pramanik started his
political career as a youth leader in the Trinamool Congress. However, he had a
falling out with the party in 2018 and fielded around 300 candidates against
the Trinamool in Panchayat elections. Soon after that, he quit to join the BJP.

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A resident of Dinhata, Pramanik has a
bachelor degree in Computer Applications. He is a member of the Standing
Committee on Information Technology and a member of the consultative committee,
Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

Pramanik took oath on
Wednesday as part of the major reshuffle of the Cabinet that saw 12 sitting
ministers being axed and 36 new faces being inducted. The reshuffle took the
strength of the Cabinet to 78, including the PM, just a shade short of the
stipulated 81.

The expansion also saw
the biggest ever representation being given to leaders from the northeast with
two cabinet ministers and three ministers of state.

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The new entrants from the
region include former Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal, former minister
Kiren Rijiju from Arunachal Pradesh, lawmaker Pratima Bhowmik  from
Tripura and Manipur MP Dr Rajkumar Ranjan Singh. Rameshwar Teli from Assam is
already an MoS.