The demands are staggering and range from a special economic package wanted by Sikkim (cost: Rs 3,000 crore) to crop damage compensation asked by Madhya Pradesh (cost: Rs 2,300 crore) to a joint request from Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana to raise the wheat procurement price to Rs 610 per quintal.

Karnataka and Assam both want international airports. Assam has also submitted a bill to build a permanent capital. Cost: Rs 1,000 crore. Orissa has given the Centre a choice of either waiving the interest on its Central loan for five years or reimbursing the State exchequer for the burden of implementing the Fifth Pay Commission scales. Cost: Rs 1,300 crore.

Some of the demands areleftovers from the short-lived tenure of the United Front Government. Some are new. Put together, the bills left behind by the chief ministers who came calling on the newly sworn-in prime minister have reached ridiculous proportions.

The longest shopping list is from Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi who slapped Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha in Patna last week with a demand for Rs 12,000 crore for every kind of developmental project possible.

The new Government is slightly dazed. Unused to the tendency of State governments to exaggerate their claims, it is not quite sure what to do with the requests piling up with the PM.

Unfortunately, the politics of patronage popularised by successive Congress Governments and stretched to incredible lengths by the UF Governments seems doomed to continue. The BJP is eager to win friends and influence votes for the next round of polls. And the Chief Ministers are pressing home their advantage to squeeze vast sums of money which may have otherwise been denied tothem.

Like Assam Chief Minister Prafulla Mahanta who is determined to extract his pound of flesh for supporting the BJP and has cleverly used Gujral's profligacy in Punjab to his benefit. Vajpayee goes to Guwahati next week equipped with a costly package for the State which includes a sum of Rs 3,000 crore as reimbursement for the purchase of security-related expenditure to fight insurgency. (Gujral set the precedent by declaring insurgency a "national problem").

MP Chief Minister Digvijay Singh's demand for Rs 2,300 crore is proving to be another headache. Although Singh is a Congress Chief Minister, Assembly polls are due in the State later this year and the BJP is hoping to wrest the government from its rival. Crop damage relief may be a quick, although expensive, route to victory.

Similarly, Karnataka has put the Centre in a quandary. Chief Minister JH Patel asked for a modest sum of Rs 250 crore, also for crop relief to cotton farmers. Rival he may be, but Rural Development Minister Babagouda Patilof the BJP is bent on helping out his home State. He has shot off a letter to Vajpayee in support of the CM's demand, arguing that if the UF Government could help out Andhra farmers when pests destroyed their crops, then why not Karnataka farmers?

The Minister has also agreed to the CM's demand for a developmental package for the State, the cost of which is yet to be calculated.

But the one the Government is bracing itself for is the bill being prepared by Mamata Banerjee for her support. Reports reaching the BJP here suggest that her package for West Bengal will include a super highway connecting Siliguri to Calcutta, to be built at the cost of Rs 1,500 crore.