CIC Habibullah spent Rs23 lakh of taxpayers on foreign trips

Chief information commissioner (CIC) Wajahat Habibullah spent nearly Rs23 lakh of the taxpayer on foreign trips, even as the government called for austerity in the face of rising inflation.

The information was revealed in reply to an RTI query by Mumbai-based activist Girish Mittal.

Interestingly, according to the 200-page reply received by Mittal, all other information commissioners present and former spent only Rs18 lakh on foreign tours.

Habibullah undertook nine foreign trips, including three to the US, from February 2006 to May 2010.

“In 2007, he went to the US to deliver lectures at Brigham Young University at Provo, Utah, and Harvard University, Boston. The tour cost nearly Rs8.1 lakh, of which airfare alone account for Rs7.83 lakh,” Mittal said.

“In 2008, he went to Miami and Washington for a conference and to address representatives of World Bank, IMF and Inter-American Banks at a cost of nearly Rs8 lakh. Another visit to the US in 2010 was a sponsored trip,” he said.

Mittal drew attention to a government memorandum that noted a need to prune down expenditure on foreign travel.

“No proposal for participation in workshops/seminars/presentations of papers abroad at government cost shall be entertained…. Only those proposals which are 100% funded by sponsoring agencies may be considered keeping in view public interest and government business at home,” it said.

“As the face and voice of India’s RTI regime, Habibullah’s primary job is to dispose of RTI appeals. He can go abroad, but certainly not at the taxpayer’s expense. He went on all these tours in official capacity, which means he was getting benefits such as travel allowance and salary,” Mittal said, adding, “A large number of appeals are pending before the central information commission.

How did these visits help RTI applicants in India?”

Information commissioner AN Tiwari went on two foreign tours to New Zealand and Mexico, spending nearly Rs9.5 lakh.

Former information commissioners Padma Balasubramanian and OP Kejariwal went to the UK for an international conference of information commissioners in 2006, spending over Rs4.5 lakh.
Activist-turned-information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi visited Dhaka for a conference on RTI, which cost nearly Rs1 lakh.