New Delhi, May 19
In what is a changed scenario after the Congress got a comfortable number of MPs, Punjab, as of now, is likely to get just two ministerial berths. At present, there are three ministers in the “Punjab quota” and all are from the Rajya Sabha. Sources said the party high command was keen on giving representation to elected MPs from the Lok Sabha.
The name of Mohinder Singh Kaypee is almost finalised and the second minister could be from among three youths, Manish Tewari, Vijay Inder Singla and Ravneet Singh Bittu. If the choice is to have a minister from among the new “youth brigade”, the party, as per indications, could opt for Tewari, whose background of being the national spokesperson will carry weight. There is hectic lobbying to have a woman minister from Punjab. In that case, Preneet Kaur, three times MP from Patiala, is the frontrunner ahead of Santosh Chaudhary of Hoshiarpur and RS member Ambika Soni.
Sources, however, said in case of the soft-spoken and articulate Kaypee, his biodata is being studied and he will make it for sure. Kaypee is a law graduate. He belongs to the Scheduled Caste community and has been minister in Punjab twice. Added to that is the fact that he is a victim of terrorist violence (his father Darshan Singh Kaypee was gunned down by militants in the heydays of the ‘Khalistan’ movement). He is likely to get a “good portfolio”.
If the party finally opts to shift its options and have LS MPs as ministers then the three ministers from the RS, Manohar Singh Gill, Ashwani Kumar and Ambika Soni, will not be chosen. Another theory doing the rounds is that one of the RS MPs could retain the ministership while two new faces could be taken from the LS. This looks a distant possibility till now.
Collectively, North India may have at least eight ministers, two each from Punjab and Haryana (Rao Inderjit Singh and Kumari Selja), Virbhadra Singh from Himachal Pradesh, Pawan Bansal from Chandigarh, while two from Delhi, Ajay Maken and Kapil Sibal.
