UPA ministers fly high with 751 foreign trips in 2 years

The Prime Minister’s Office’s directive last year asking ministers to avoid frequent foreign tours to conserve foreign exchange seems to have gone with the wind.

UPA II ministers made at least 751 visits abroad within two years of the formation of the government in May 2009, DNA can show. Of these, the newspaper could get airfare expenditure details of only 260 trips — that itself was over Rs12 crore.

Information accessed by DNA under the RTI shows that between May 2009 and June 2011, the PMO received 777 proposals for foreign tours from about 40 ministries. Only 26 of these were rejected by the PMO.

The government woke up to the situation in mid-2010 and put in a stringent procedure to check overseas travels by ministers. While 378 proposals for foreign tours were cleared between May 2009 and July 2010, the figure for the next one year is 371 — little reduction in the number.

Altogether, UPA ministers spent about 3,000 days abroad in the two years.

Among the 83 ministers who traveled abroad since May 2009, external affairs minister SM Krishna leads the pack with 51 trips.

His total stay outside India was more than 138 days. He is followed by commerce and industries minister Anand Sharma, who made 46 foreign tours and spent 178 days abroad. Repeated calls and e-mails to the PMO for comments elicited no response.

NCP’s Praful Patel made 29 trips abroad during the period — only slightly more than his party chief Sharad Pawar who spent 89 days in foreign nations during 24 trips.

Similarly, minister for civil aviation and overseas Indian affairs Vayalar Ravi spent 116 days in 27 foreign tours. The airfare expenditure of 18 of his tours was above Rs1.5 crore. Former environment minister Jairam Ramesh was abroad for 104 days in 29 tours.

Not far down in the list is Malikarjun Kharge, whose airfare expenditure was above Rs1.1 crore for the 37 days (10 trips) he spent outside the country for official visits.

Besides airfare, there were expenditure on accommodation, food, etc. However, these details couldn’t be accessed for any of the 751 trips — which would have shown the total cost borne by the national exchequer on the foreign travels of our ministers.

DNA had filed RTI applications to the PMO and 40 ministries separately in June this year, requesting details of the foreign visits made by ministers since the formation of the UPA II government.
The petition sought information on the total number of tours made by each minister, the countries visited and number of days spent abroad along with an approximate expenditure incurred on each one of them.

The PMO and most of the ministries provided all the details, except expenditure particulars. Some of the ministries responded saying, “The information can be obtained from the respective P&AO (Pay and accounts officer).” Some others said, “Foreign travel expenses of union ministers are met by the cabinet secretariat.”

“As such PAO, cabinet secretariat, has been requested to provide the required intimation directly to you under intimation to this ministry,” Farooq Abdulla’s New and Renewable energy ministry said in response to the RTI petition.

Finance and external affairs ministries were the only two that provided information about airfare expenditure of all of their ministers’ trips.

Praful Patel’s civil aviation and heavy industries ministries gave expenditure details of only four of the 29 tours made by him.

Similarly, the IT and communication ministry, whose heads spent 100 days abroad in 23 foreign tours, did not give any details of the expenditure incurred on the tours.

Besides, Murli Deora has been a frequent flier too. So is MOS for commerce and industry Jyotiraditya Scindia. Even Shashi Tharoor traveled abroad a lot when he was a minister.