President's foreign trips cost much less than her domestic tours

Anil Singh, TNN, 29 January 2010, 10:04pm IST

MUMBAI: Some of President Pratibha Patil's domestic trips have cost more than her overseas tours, going by the figures given by the President's Secretariat to an applicant under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. For instance, the ``tour expenses'' of the President on a five-day visit to Assam and Meghalaya from October 19 to 24 last year are given as Rs 1,35,539 whereas the expenses under the same head on her 14-day trip of Latin America in April 2008 came to Rs 12,878. Another fact that emerges from the reply is that Patil's overseas tour expenses are just a fraction of that of her predecessor, Abdul Kalam. Patil's four visits to eight countries till July 31 last year cost the exchequer Rs 1,95,251 cumulatively whereas each of President Kalam's overseas jaunts between 2004-'07 cost more than Rs one lakh. These are figures culled from a reply given by the President's Secretariat to Chetan Kothari from Mumbai, who had in July last year asked for the expenditure incurred on each of the domestic and foreign trips of the President in the last five years. Of these, Abdul Kalam was the President for the first three years and Patil took over on July 25, 2007. The President's Secretariat says Kalam made six overseas trips between July 01, 2004 and April 28, 2007 and the round figure of the collective tour expenses came to Rs 14 lakhs. This excludes his tour expenses to UAE from November 3-4, 2004, which are not given in the RTI reply. In fact, the reply has raised several questions which have remained unanswered despite clarifications sought by this correspondent from the President's Secretariat. For instance, the Secretariat refused to explain what constitutes `tour expenses' of the President. Archana Datta, officer on special duty in the Secretariat, said in November last year that she would not be able to answer the questions raised by the RTI reply. In fact, the Secretariat stonewalled Kothari too when sought details from them. The Secretariat had not answered Kothari's question about the number of people accompanying the President on trips abroad although they said that 30 to 35 people accompany the President on each domestic visit. The RTI reply given by the President's Secretariat says that the expenses of the President's visits are borne by the respective state governments and by the Ministry of Defence/External Affairs. It also says that there is no cap on the expenditure on the visits. Aviation sources say the President flies abroad either in an Embraer aircraft flown by air force pilots or in a special Air India jumbo jet. Earlier, in February 2009, Kothari asked for the expenses of the Prime Minister on foreign trips over the past five years and the PMO's reply is much more elaborate. For instance, on a trip to USA, Germany and Switzerland from July 16-22, 2005, the PMO spent Rs 11.9 cr on hiring a charter aircraft from AI, Rs 33.9 lakhs on hotline communication facilities and Rs 68,476 on daily allowance, accommodation etc. From November 11-14 in 2005, the PM visited Bangaldesh and the cost of chartering an AI plane came to Rs 3.07 cr while the daily allowance, accommodation etc came to Rs 76,216. The expenditure on hotline is not mentioned as the ``bills had not been received so far''. ``Family members have accompanied the PM on his foreign visits,'' says the reply of the PMO, adding that the government of India bears the expenditure on the foreign tours of the PM. The grand total of the expenses incurred on the PM's 34 foreign excursions from July 29, 2004 to November 10, 2008, comes to Rs 230 crore. The figure would have been slightly higher but the expenses incurred in chartering planes for four trips between September 27 and November 10, 2008 have not been provided. Mumbai RTI activist Krishnaraj Rao says evasive and incomplete replies are not expected from high government offices, least of all the President's Secretariat.