Babul Supriyo, 51, is among new ministers in Mamata Banerjee's Bengal cabinet.
Babul Supriyo, once a minister in Narendra Modi's union cabinet, today became a minister in the West Bengal government of Mamata Banerjee. He had joined her party, Trinamool Congress, last year after exiting the BJP.
Here are 5 key facts about his journey as a politician:
The singer-turned-politician was once a banker. After success as a Bollywood singer, he entered politics after a chance meeting with yoga guru Ramdev. He became a Lok Sabha member from Asansol in 2014 — was made a minister too — and then again in 2019, but quit in 2021, soon after he was dropped from the union cabinet.
Last year, he had contested the assembly polls from Tollygunge on the BJP ticket but lost, as the Trinamool won a third consecutive term. His loss, by a huge margin of 50,000 votes, came even as the BJP increased its numbers significantly in the assembly.
After quitting the BJP to join the TMC — one of many to do so after the assembly poll — he'd said he was disillusioned with the BJP and exited because he was not okay with being benched. "I felt I should move on to a place, to a team where the coach would want me in the team," he told NDTV.
He became a member of the assembly in a bypoll as Mamata Banerjee fielded him from Ballygunge, a seat that fell vacant due to the death of minister Subrata Mukherjee. On a Trinamool ticket, actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha won the Asansol Lok Sabha seat, which Mr Supriyo had left.
As a singer, he's known primarily for romantic melodies — considered part of an artistic lineage of popular singers from Bengal, such as Kishore Kumar and Kumar Sanu. He has mainly sung for Hindi films, besides in Bengali and other languages.
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