West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday directed all her ministers to stop using pilot cars with red beacon anywhere in the state, except highways, and advised them to be very careful while signing any official document, a senior official in Kolkata said.
The fresh directives from Ms Banerjee are being seen as an attempt to rebuild the image of her government which received back-to-back jolts following the arrests of senior leaders Partha Chatterjee and Anubrata Mondal.
Addressing the first meeting of the state cabinet, following the recent reshuffle, Ms Banerjee also stated that her department would fix separate tasks for the ministers of state, who till date had “very little responsibilities” to carry out.
"The chief minister at Thursday's meeting asked her ministers to stop using pilot cars. Ministers can be escorted by pilot cars with red beacon at times when they are travelling on highways, but not anywhere else in the state," the bureaucrat told PTI after the meeting.
"She also advised cabinet ministers to go through any documents thoroughly before signing them," he said.
At Thursday's meeting, Ms Banerjee was learnt to have pulled up state forest minister Jyotipriya Mallick, pointing out that she had been receiving several complaints against him.
She directed Mallick to maintain a “clean image”.
Partha Chatterjee, who held the industry portfolio, was relieved of his ministerial responsibilities and suspended from the TMC following his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) last month in connection with the probe into a school recruitment scam.
Notably, Thursday's was the first cabinet meeting after Mr Chatterjee's removal from the ministry.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
