PM to hear grievances of junior ministers tomorrow

Amid complaints that they were being ignored by their seniors, prime minister Manmohan Singh will meet his junior colleagues tomorrow to hear their grievances.
    
The meeting assumes significance as it comes in the wake of reports that several junior ministers were feeling "under- utilised" as Cabinet ministers failed to allocate them much work.

Singh has invited ministers of state with independent charge as also MoS for the meeting, the first such gathering in the UPA-II, after some of them aired their views that they were not getting enough work from their seniors.
    
The talk in government circles is that that some junior ministers do not attend office frequently in views of lack of adequate work. The matters have come to such a pass that one of the alliance leaders wrote to the prime minister requesting him to direct a cabinet minister to allot more work to his party minister.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi had also sometime back sought to intervene in the matter by saying publicly that junior ministers should be given work by their seniors. She had made known her views while addressing the Congress Parliamentary Party meeting a few months back.

"The prime minister wants to get a feedback from them on their contribution," said an official in the prime minister's Office (PMO).

There are 45 ministers of state including seven with independent charge in the 78-member Council of Ministers in the Manmohan Singh government.