New Delhi, April 6: Manmohan Singh today brought two young MPs into his ministry but Rahul Gandhi opted out.

Sonia Gandhi later told reporters in Rashtrapati Bhavan that she would have liked Rahul to join the government — something the Prime Minister, too, has wanted for a long time.

“But because he (Rahul) has taken up the responsibility of reviving the Youth Congress, he did not want to take it (a ministry job) up because he felt he wouldn’t be able to do justice to it,” she said.

The two members of Rahul’s “babalog” brigade who were inducted are Jyotiraditya Scindia and Jitin Prasada.

Scindia’s inclusion had long been expected, and Prasada came in because he belongs to Rahul’s “inner circle” and is a Brahmin from Uttar Pradesh. The Congress is trying to win back its traditional voters, whose core is made up of Brahmins, in the state.

Asked why more young MPs were not included, Sonia replied: “We would have liked to, but in coalition politics this is not always possible.”

Whatever the pressures of coalition politics, Raghunath Jha of the Rashtriya Janata Dal was the only non-Congress entrant.

“We wanted to send out the message that the Prime Minister meant business and that, in the run-up to the polls, non-performers will not be encouraged,” a cabinet minister said.

The six who were dropped were ministers of state, most of them rarely heard in Parliament or outside.

Suresh Pachauri and M.V. Rajeshekaran, junior ministers respectively of personnel and planning, had completed their Rajya Sabha terms.

The other four are M.R. Gavit, Dasari Narayan Rao, Akhilesh Das and T. Subbarami Reddy. Of them, Reddy alone was seen and sometimes heard, but for the wrong reasons — such as for refurbishing his office extravagantly or for complaining his senior was not assigning him work.

State elections and caste equations guided the shuffle. If the party hoped to gain in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh by bringing in Scindia and Prasada, the choice of Santosh Bagrodia, Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan, surprised many.

These sections had expected Dausa MP Sachin Pilot to be given a berth as a way of placating the Gujjars, engaged in a feud with the Meenas. The Congress has a Meena minister, Namo Narayan Meena.

“We didn’t want to annoy the Meenas or the Jats,” a source said. Bagrodia, a Bania, was seen as the “safest bet”.

Rameshwar Oraon from Jharkhand was included apparently to strengthen Rahul’s project of winning the tribals back from the BJP and the regional parties.

V. Narayanaswamy’s entry was aimed at ending the trouble in Puducherry, the only southern state the Congress rules. He had been bent on removing chief minister N. Rangaswamy and making a bid himself.

If Narayanaswamy was “rewarded” for stoking trouble, another southern minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar, was less lucky. He lost the sports and youth affairs portfolio to former chief election commissioner M.S. Gill, a new face.

The Prime Minister and senior Congress leaders were unhappy with Aiyar for making a public statement against Delhi hosting the Commonwealth Games, and for not trying hard enough to win the Asian Games bid. Aiyar keeps panchayati raj and northeastern region development.

With two departures from Andhra Pradesh, sources said, another shuffle is expected after the Telengana by-elections. The induction of V. Hanumantha Rao, Rajya Sabha MP from Telengana, was on the cards but the government put it off lest it be seen as blatantly motivated.