MUMBAI, May 25 -- The state Public Works Department (PWD) is doing the kind of math that never quite adds up. At Mantralaya, or the state secretariat, where space equals ego; multiplied by one more deputy chief minister, plus their entourage of 164; plus 13 ministers and 240 administrative staff - how do you fit them all in without starting a turf war? While the PWD attempts spatial gymnastics, the ministers' staff is performing their own version of acrobatics. Carpenters, slicing and dicing cabins and corridors to pull new space out of thin air, have even shrunk a few cabins from 120sq ft to a miniscule 36sq ft, to make way for more cabins. The six-storey secretariat at Nariman Point, where the offices of the chief minister, deputy chief ministers and council of ministers is located, was built in 1955. Apart from the ministers and their massive administrative staff numbers, Mantralaya has a staff strength of around 3,000. This includes the bureaucracy and government officers, who handle the administrative work of the government, clerical staff and others. So why is the secretariat struggling to cope with the numbers? The council of ministers has grown since the previous Mahayuti government, and, for the first time, Maharashtra has not one but two deputy chief ministers. The space occupied by their massive staff is causing a stir in the corridors of power. The sixth floor of Mantralaya is the 'power corridor' as the offices of chief minister and deputy chief ministers are situated here. From 2014 to 2022, every chief minister including Devendra Fadnavis, Uddhav Thackeray and Eknath Shinde, had a staff of 140-146 in the Chief Minister's Office (CMO). The CMO now has 18 more staff, taking the total to 164. To accommodate these additional 18 employees, the chief minister's public relations office has shifted to the fifth floor, to a converted office space. Another reason for the space crunch is the fact that Maharashtra has not one but two deputy chief ministers, a first since 2023. "In 2019, the Deputy CM's office has a staff of 70. In 2022, when Fadnavis became deputy CM, the number went up by two. But since the second Mahayuti government took over in November last year, and the addition of a deputy CM, the staff of the two deputy CMs has risen to a colossal 144," a PWD official told HT. Adding perspective, he said, "Usually, one cabinet minister is assigned a staff of 15. Adding a deputy chief minister has added administrative staff almost equal to the staff of five cabinet ministers." Making it an even tighter squeeze is that the council of ministers has grown since the previous Mahayuti government. While the earlier government had only 29 cabinet ministers and no junior ministers, the Fadnavis government has 42 ministers, including 36 cabinet and six ministers of state. While each cabinet minister has a sanctioned staff of 16, and a minister of state 14, the growth in the number of ministers means more office space for them. Clearly, it's not the number of ministers that's got everyone in the secretariat scrambling for space; it's accommodating the administrative staff that's the challenge. Until 2014, ministers largely had government staff assigned to them. It was Fadnavis who in 2014, started appointing several 'officers on special duty' (OSDs) to the CMO, claiming he needed experts. Other ministers followed suit. So, while the difference in the number of ministers between the two Mahayuti governments is just 13, the number of administrative staff has risen from 680 to 920 - a difference of 240 employees. Hence, the space constraints. Now the PWD has no choice but to create additional space by shrinking the staff's existing cabins, and building new ones, many of them in the 460-sq ft waiting area mean for visitors, or members of the public, outside the ministers' cabins on each floor of the secretariat. While the standard size of an official's cabin used to be 120-150sq ft, now three cabins stand, cheek by jowl, in an area earlier occupied by two. "In some instances, we have built cabins as small as 36sq ft," said a PWD official. PWD officials told HT that cabinet ministers in the main secretariat building haven't given up so much as a square inch. Their offices still sprawl across 2,500-3,000 sq ft. However, some ministers in the annex have had to endure the unthinkable - downsizing. "They have been offered offices of 1,700-2,000 sq ft. Ministers of state have been given even smaller chambers, of around 900 to 1,000sq ft," said the official. Not taking the snub lying down, junior ministers like Madhuri Misal and Meghana Bordikar have taken their offices - and pride - outside Mantralaya. While Bordikar now works out of Nirmal Building, which has other government offices, Misal has set up an office in a private building. "We have been given a small space of around 1,000sq ft on the seventh floor of the Mantralaya annex. Since the minister has multiple departments to handle, she now works out of an office in Nirmal Bhavan. On days when the cabinet meets, she uses her Mantralaya office," said an official from Bordikar's office. While these arrangements are not exactly temporary, they're not permanent either. In four months, the secretariat will have a brand new, five-storey building to work out of, a PWD official said. How will this help? The official said the plan is to move a few cabinet ministers and ministers of state here, along with their staff, easing pressure on the main secretariat building. "The new building will accommodate 15 ministers, with each minister getting a 2,000-sq ft office," said the PWD official....