Manmohan Singh Writes To PM Modi, Seeks To Retain His Staff Strength

Mumbai: Former PM Manmohan Singh has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking him to allow him to retain 14 members.

It has come in the backdrop of reports that, after winning the Lok Sabha elections, the government reduced the size of the support of individual employees to the former Prime Minister. Singh’s staff was reduced from 14 to 5 in May.

Manmohan Singh also provided an example to emphasize the examples of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and PV Narasimha Rao.

This comes after, the Modi government decided to reduce the size of his staff. The five staffers include two personal assistants, one lower division clerk and two peons.

The development took place three days after the Modi government was voted back to power in the Lok Sabha election.

In his letter, Singh told Modi that his government had allowed Vajpayee to retain his employees after being out of power in 2004. The former Prime Ministers are allowed to hold 14-member staff after a decision by Narasimha Rao Government in this decade.

The 14-member staff comprises the officers of the level of Assistant and Peon, besides the Director, Under Secretary and Deputy Secretary level officers. According to the rule, the size of the staff was reduced from 14 to five after five years of leaving the PMO.

However, all former prime ministers, including IK Gujral and HD Deve Gowda, were exempted from all the Incumbents in the PMO. In Vajpayee’s case, the size of the staff was reduced to 12, but this happened when the late BJP leader expressed his desire to cut the size of the staff

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