Vidhana Soudha may seem massive, but the jumbo ministry has created a space squeeze in the State's Secretariat.

The result: A Government order throwing out a number of Finance, Law, and Personnel and Administrative Reforms sections from the Vidhana Soudha. The new ministers will occupy these rooms, while the displaced sections and officers will move to the newly-built fifth stage of the multi-storeyed (MS) buildings.

On a few occasions earlier, when there was a shortage of rooms in the Vidhana Soudha, the Government accommodated the ministers in the MS buildings. The new ministers, however, insist on chambers in Vidhana Soudha. All the better to`impress' people from their constituencies.

Most ministers, a Secretariat official put it, believe their image would go down a few notches if they did not have chambers in the Vidhana Soudha.

As per the arrangement worked out, Sericulture Minister D Nagarajaiah will occupy the chambers vacated by Finance Department's Expenditure Secretary and Resources Secretary.

Minister of State for Social Welfare D Narayana Das will take the rooms housing Finance Department's Joint Secretary (Services), two Under Secretaries of the Finance Department and their sections. Law Department's Additional Secretary's office and DPAR offices in the ground floor will become the chambers of the Minister of State for Home Ashwathnarayana Reddy. The chambers occupied by D T Jayakumar, who resigned as Horticulture Minister, will henceforth be the office of Minister of State for Labour K Amarnath Shetty.

When the Vidhana Soudha was built, ministers and secretaries functioned from there. The third floor, called the corridor ofpower, housed ministers' offices while secretaries occupied rooms on the second floor. The Legislature offices were functioning from the first floor. With the size of the ministry progressively increasing, the Government built MS buildings and shifted the departments.

The Government has allotted the ground and first floors of the new MS building extension. Of the seven floors planned in the new building, three are complete.