Spaced out

With the press information offices of some ministries such as home and finance shifting to the newly-opened National Media Centre nearby from the congested Shastri Bhavan, a mad race has begun among bureaucrats of the remaining departments to grab the rooms left vacant by the departures. Almost every day, there are two or three requests from departments that are already housed in Shastri Bhawan, such as health, law and petroleum, to hand over the newly vacant rooms to them. In fact, the space crunch is so acute that one request has even come from the information and broadcasting ministry, of which the Press Information Bureau is a part.