PM keeps alive hopes of ministerial aspirants

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today kept the hopes alive of many a ministerial aspirants by promising a "more expansive" exercise after the Budget session of Parliament which concludes in May.

"This is a minor reshuffle and after Budget session of Parliament, we will do a more expansive exercise," Singh told reporters after the first expansion of his ministry.

His remarks came to a query as to what was his message after the induction of six ministers in his one-and-a-half year old government.

In the exercise today, Singh did not drop any of the ministers but changed portfolios of several of them in order to give a fresh look to his government facing a series of scams.

There have been ministerial hopefuls from almost every state and  inspite of today's exercise, three  states -- Chhattisgarh, Goa and Manipur -- have still no representation in the union council of ministers.