New Delhi, June 7: After foreign trips, glossy government conferences are set to bear the brunt of the Prime Minister’s austerity drive, at least at Arjun Singh’s ministry.

Plastic folders are out; paper folders are in. Billboards announcing major conferences can go; cloth banners will do. And no need for mementoes, please.

The human resource development (HRD) ministry has answered the Prime Minister’s call for a tightening of belts by offering to cut day-to-day costs and the expenditure on seminars and conferences.

On June 4, the day fuel prices were hiked, Manmohan Singh had written to all Union ministers saying it was “a moral duty to cut out all wasteful expenditure in our own establishments”.

In a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office today, higher education secretary R.P. Agrawal promised, on behalf of the ministry, to curb spending, sources said. That restraint will be in evidence, Agrawal said, at the annual conference of state education ministers scheduled here on July 2 and 3.

The meeting was expected to cost Rs 7 lakh to organise, but sources said the ministry now hopes to limit the bill to Rs 6 lakh. Accessories handed out to the delegates are likely to be the first casualty.

“Usually, the delegates are given plastic folders and a bag. We plan to replace the plastic folders with cheaper paper folders, and may do away with the bag altogether,” a ministry official said.

Huge billboards announcing such conferences usually adorn key Delhi junctions and the venue. These may be sacrificed for cloth banners and the venue decorations reduced, the sources said. Other freebies, such as mementoes, are likely to be dropped.

But the state education ministers’ air tickets to Delhi are likely to cost the exchequer over Rs 2 lakh, and will possibly form the largest chunk of the expenditure on the conference, the sources said.

However, under peer pressure, the ministry decided late this evening to cancel the scheduled foreign trips by Agrawal and junior education minister D. Purandeswari. The decision followed daylong deliberations.

The Prime Minister’s June 4 letter had said: “There is substantial scope to reduce expenditure on travel and administration…. I am, therefore, writing to ask you to severely curtail expenditure on air travel, particularly foreign travel, except… (when) absolutely necessary.”

Tourism and culture minister Ambika Soni, information and broadcasting minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi and roads and shipping minister T.R. Baalu had yesterday announced they were cancelling foreign trips.

Purandeswari was scheduled to fly to Canada later this month to lecture NRIs on Delhi’s education policy.

Agrawal, too, was to travel to Canadian capital Ottawa next week to attend the annual meeting of the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary. The institute, named after former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, is a joint initiative between the two countries to promote education ties.