New Delhi, Sept. 26 :    New Delhi, Sept. 26:  Family members of Lal Bahadur Shastri are a harried lot. In the next one week, they have to organise a function to mark the birth anniversary of the former Prime Minister at his samadhi at Vijay Ghat, ensure attendance of all VIPs, send out invitations, arrange flowers and devotional music. So what's new? Nothing, except that the function until now had been the all-expenses-paid responsibility of the urban development ministry. Not any more. The Centre has decided that henceforth all such functions will have to be organised by the families concerned. It will only hold functions to commemorate Mahatma Gandhi's birth and death anniversaries. Incidentally, Shastri shares his birthday with the father of the nation. Like the Shastris, the Nehru-Gandhi family, too, will be in a similar predicament in the next two months. It has to organise functions on Indira Gandhi's death and birth anniversaries on October 31 and November 19 as well as celebrate Jawaharlal Nehru's birthday on November 14. The Cabinet's decision asking family members and trusts to raise funds to hold the customary anniversary functions has not gone down well with the descendants of these national icons. Apart from the financial burden, the families are concerned about attendance. They doubt whether VIPs would attend these functions, which were earlier mandatory due to protocol. Some Congress leaders went to the extent of alleging a 'sinister design' behind the Cabinet move as all memorials belonged to party stalwarts. Government sources denied the charge and pointed to the Supreme Court's appreciation for urban development minister Jagmohan and his ministry. Questioning the government's rationale, a member of the family of a former Prime Minister pointed out that while the ministry had agreed to pay for maintenance and development of these samadhis, it had washed its hands of organising functions that cost just a few thousand. 'Has it been done to avoid mandatory visits by the VIPs 16 times a year?' he asked. The government maintains nine samadhis on the banks of the Yamuna in memory of Gandhi, Nehru, Shastri, Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Charan Singh, Jagjivan Ram, Shankar Dayal Sharma and Sanjay Gandhi. In the case of former president Sharma, who died earlier this year, a trust is yet to be formed. Teen Murti Trust and Nehru Memorial Library were set up in Nehru's memory, but being a government-sponsored trust, it has been primarily associated with academic work. A Congress-affiliated Jawahar Bhawan Trust, headed by Sonia Gandhi is, therefore, likely to arrange the function in his memory on November 14.