New Delhi, Sept. 17: Pranab Mukherjee will officiate in the absence of the Prime Minister, who will be away for eight days from Sunday.

The defence minister, who is second in the pecking order of the United Progressive Alliance government, will preside over cabinet meetings and other functions during the period.

Sources in Mukherjee?s office confirmed that he was asked to remain in the capital. A communiqu? could be issued by the cabinet secretariat.

In the unstated power hierarchy, Mukherjee comes second and is followed by human resource development minister Arjun Singh and railway minister Laloo Prasad Yadav in that order.

Although agriculture minister Sharad Pawar was initially placed fourth and Laloo Prasad fifth, the former has since been brought down as the railway minister?s Rashtriya Janata Dal has a little over twice as many MPs than the Maharashtra leader?s Nationalist Congress Party.

Mukherjee was in charge when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went on his first foreign trip to Bangkok in July for three days.