New Delhi, July 12
The UPA has promoted Beni Prasad Verma to the Cabinet rank and given an important portfolio to Salman Khurshid to help Congress in its Mission Uttar Pradesh-2012, the next acid test for the Nehru-Gandhi scion Rahul Gandhi, but Punjab, also facing elections the same year, has been given the cold shoulder with no replacement for ousted Statistics and Programme Implementation Minister MS Gill.

THE NEW LOOK: President Pratibha Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pose for a group photo with the new ministers during a swearing-in ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Tuesday. Tribune photo: Mukesh Aggarwal

Punjab Rajya Sabha member MS Gill, after being labelled “deadwood” following the Commonwealth Games debacle, has been dropped from a relatively low profile Statistics and Programme Implementation Minister to make way for Chemical and Fertilisers Minister Srikant Jena, who, expecting to be elevated to the Cabinet rank, is in fact peeved at the additional responsibility.

Gill has reacted philosophically saying he was comfortable without being a minister. “I am comfortable in my own skin.

The rest is fluff. It comes and goes,” he said reacting to being dropped from 
the Cabinet.

A former bureaucrat, Gill rose to become the Chief Election Commissioner and joined the Congress after demitting the Constitutional office to become a Rajya Sabha member in 2004. He became Minister of Sports and Youth Affairs and was elevated as the Cabinet Minister in 2009. In the last reshuffle in January, he was shifted to the Statistics and Programme Implementation Ministry.

Till the official announcement this morning, names of many Punjab leaders were doing the rounds, including that of Congress spokesperson and Ludhiana MP Manish Tewari, Anandpur Sahib MP Ravneet Singh Bittu, Gurdaspur MP Partap Singh Bajwa and Jalandhar MP Mohinder Singh Kaypee with Tewari and Bittu being the front runners. However, in the case of Tewari, he seems to have lost for doing well the job of party spokesman during recent times of crisis.