Ex-ministers miss deadline for leaving official bungalows

After several former Union ministers failed to meet the June 26 deadline to vacate their official residences in the national capital, the Urban Development Ministry is planning to serve fresh notices to them.

The extension requests made by some former ministers on the grounds of health or children’s education are unlikely to be accepted, sources said.

Among the new ministers, nine Cabinet ministers including External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu, Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will retain the bungalows they have been occupying as MPs while 29 have been allotted new bungalows to match their current stature.

Those who have been allotted new bungalows include Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, Railway Minister Sadananda Gowda and MSME Minister Kalraj Mishra.

But, most of them have not occupied the bungalows allotted to them as they are still occupied by the former ministers.

Some of the former ministers including A K Antony, Sushilkumar Shinde and P Chidambaram have vacated their official residences.

Separately, Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu in an interview to PTI said that though some of the former ministers sought more time to vacate their residences, the government cannot give an extension beyond reasonable period.

“Extension for two/three months cannot be given because rule does not allow such thing,” he argued.

Earlier, Lok Sabha House Committee headed by Kirit Somaiya, which supervises allotment of accommodation of  Lok Sabha members, rejected the request of former MPs to extentd their stay in government houses and asked the Directorate of Estate of the Urban Development Ministry to initiate eviction process.