Chief minister Mamata Banerjee today announced that seven more new districts will be carved out of North and South 24-Parganas, Murshidabad, Bankura and Nadia for smooth functioning of the state administration. With this, the total number of districts in West Bengal will increase from 23 to 30. “Within six months, we will create seven new districts in the state. These are Sunderbans, Ichhamati, Ranaghat, Bishnupur, Kandi, Behrampur and one will be named in Basirhat,” said Miss Banerjee after the cabinet meeting in Nabanna. The Ichhamati district will be formed with Bongaon and Bagda areas of North 24-Parganas and the district in Basirhat in South 24-Parganas is yet to be named, said Miss Banerjee.

Thus, two new districts (Kandi and Berhampur) will be carved out of Murshidabad, two (Bashirhat and Ichhemati) of North 24-Parganas, one each of South 24-Parganas (Sunderbans), Bankura (Bishnupur) and Nadia (Ranaghat) respectively. According to sources, the proposed Sunderbans district is likely to be formed with Gosaba, Basanti and Kultali areas in South 24-Parganas. Earlier, speaking at the annual general meeting of the West Bengal Civil Service (WBCS-executive) officers in Kolkata Miss Banerjee had said: “We want more districts to accelerate developmental works in the state. We need at least 46 districts against the existing 23. When we increase the number of districts, we will have to deploy more officers. Therefore, we will have to increase the vacancies of WBCS-cadre officers.”

The area under the existing districts in the state is vast and therefore they need to be split further, she had said, adding that the state needs more manpower and infrastructure for the purpose. “We will increase the quota of WBCS officers so that they can be deployed in the newly-formed districts,” she added. In April, Miss Banerjee had requested the Centre to assign more IAS and IPS to the state as the government was planning to carve out more districts. Following Miss Banerjee’s directive, state chief secretary HK Dwivedi had written to the Centre about West Bengal’s acute bureaucrat crunch and sought additional officers to man the proposed districts. Further to boost manpower to manage the proposed additional districts, the state cabinet had also approved setting up a committee of secretaries headed by Mr Dwivedi to augment the number of WBCS and WBPS officers.