Sharma who is yet to get office space in Nagpur, had been functioning from his office in Shastri Bhavan, which houses the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry. When he reported at his office last Thursday, he found the room locked. He was informed that it was being used for some other purpose and was no longer available to him.

Asked if the reports were true, Sharma said the Social Justice Ministry had been rude to him. He said: ``I have not been clinging to this office. I was waiting for alternative arrangements.''

According to Secretary D.K. Manavalan: ``It is Sharma's job to find an office in Maharashtra and the Ministry has given him enough funds. He could draw from that, besides making use of the two workers employed by him to find space.'' ``The ministry needed the office for other purposes and had given notice to him. If you still think the Ministry was rude, we cannot help it,'' he added.

Sharma claims that the ministry had been putting pressure on him to move out for quite some time, he said. He had been talking to different people in a bid to find new office space in the Capital. When he found himself locked out on Thursday, he moved with his two-member staff to the Institute for the Physically Handicapped.

Sharma says that the Maharashtra government was supposed to give him space, but it had written to the ministry saying it could not find any. Since then the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) has been looking for space on his behalf. ``I can start searching only after I get a no-objection certificate from the CPWD,'' he said.

The action of the ministry has upset many. ``The ministry's move certainly exposes its vindictiveness. It also bares the real purpose behind shifting the office to Nagpur,'' said Javed Abidi, of the Disabilities Rights Group. The commission which has the powers of a civil court has been reduced to a spectacle, he said. For two of the six months he has been in office he was preoccupied with this drama over his office. What can he be expected to do for the disabled when he is at the whim of those in power? he asks.