He’s Left On The Jet Plane

During Narendra Modi’s recent sortie into God’s Own Country, the media scrum didn’t fail to catch the prime minister’s high-pitched rhetoric on transparency. However, here’s the ‘Breaking News’ you didn’t hear—Modi’s numerous trips abroad are turning out to be a prime example of non-transparency. Despite numerous applications and appeals filed by citizens across the country under the Right to Information (RTI), there is lit­tle or no information forthcoming on the expenses incurred during the pra­dhan sevak’s 29 international visits.

RTI soldiers have tried to get this information from the prime minister’s office and also the ministry of external affairs. They have sent missives to Indian diplomatic missions across the world too. However, they have hit a dead end time after time. This, despite the fact that the RTI Act of 2012 explicitly states “information regarding the nature, place and period of foreign and domestic tours of the prime minister are already disclosed on the PMO’s website. Public authorities may proactively disclose the details of foreign and domestic official tours undertaken by the minister(s)”.

For four months or more, a retired navy officer, Commodore Lokesh Batra, has shot off application after application, at least 40 appeals to Indian embassies, missions and high commissions in each of the 20 countries the PM travelled to in his first year in office (June ’14-June ’15). The official responses to these applications, available with Outlook, are intriguing to say the least, revealing the Modi government’s cavalier mindset vis-a-vis RTI.

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One Two Ka Five

Different strokes from different folks

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In September last year, Venkatesh Nayak, co-convenor of the National Commission for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI), sought information on seven questions, one of which pertained to expenses incurred on Modi’s foreign trips. He too is still to hear from the PMO; hearing for a second appeal is now awaited. “This application has done many rounds now, it has also been sent to the cabinet secretary but nothing has come of it so far,” says Nayak. “In his characteristic style, Modi makes several statements but does little.” An RTI application by UP-based activist Saleem Baig to the PMO to elicit similar information too met with equally evasive replies.

The prime minister’s website (pmindia.gov.in) has details of all 19 foreign trips undertaken by Atal Behari Vajpayee from 1999-2004. Details pertaining to 68 out of Manmohan Singh’s 73 visits from 2004-2014 are also available on it. But under Narendra Modi, except for the Rs 2.45 crore spent on his first visit to Bhutan in June 2014, no information on the costs incurred on his subsequent 28 trips has been uploaded on the tech-savvy website (as mandated by law), although phrases like ‘quest for transparency’, ‘right to information’ etc fairly drip off it.

Indeed, for all the hype around an “action-oriented” prime minister, his website is a veritable testament to the lethargy of red tape even in “Congress-mukt Bharat”. For his trips to Brazil, Japan, USA, Myanmar, Australia and Fiji, undertaken bet­ween July and November last year, it reads: “bills under process”. For subsequent trips to Nepal (twice), Seychelles, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Singapore, France, Germany, Can­ada, China, Mongolia, South Korea, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turk­menistan, Kyrgyzstan, Taj­i­kistan and uae till August this year, it reads: “bills not received”.         

He filed another application to the PMO on August 14 to find out why the bills on chartered flights since 2013, till date, are still ‘under process’ or haven’t been cleared. However, the PMO has refused to respond to this even after two months although RTI responses are, by law, mandated to be filed within 30 days. The data available also excludes the expenses incurred by the government on the PM’s chartered flight which inc­ludes Air India One, which he flies on, and another jumbo jet kept on standby throughout the length of his trips. It also reflects nothing of the gargantuan exp­enses on his security, and advance teams of the PM, which missions are not obligated to reveal.

For instance, the Indian high commission in Canada has not made available information on expenses incurred for the PM’s security.

Saleem Baig too received only partial information, from the East and South Africa divisions of the MEA, about the amount spent in two countries—Seychelles and Maurit­ius. According to the reply, the two-day visits to both countries undertaken in March cost the exc­hequer at least Rs 1.26 crore and Rs 1.37 crore respectively. In other words, this amount is only a part of the total expense. While Baig also sought expenses incurred on the media, among others, the response stated: “You are therefore advised to approach the missions/posts directly to obtain the required information.”

“Far from his much-touted slogan of ‘maximum governance’, governance in the Modi regime has become a guarded secret. Despite the sloganeering of transparency, this government has almost entirely dismissed the RTI Act,” says V. Narayanasamy, senior Congress leader and former MoS in the PMO. “The PMO as well as different ministries and departments are almost averse to encouraging RTI applications.”

Several Indian missions across the world map have also only provided partial information or entirely denied parting with the data when confronted by RTI soldiers. While emb­assies, consulate generals or high commissions of India in 16 of these countries have revealed part of the amount expended on these trips accessible to them, four countries have ref­used outright to part with even this data. The Indian embassies that have denied information are in Sri Lanka, South Korea, Japan and France.

For instance, over Rs 2.60 crore had been spent on the PM’s one-day trip to Fiji. But the Indian embassy in Brazil has stated that the amount spent on two days in the country was just Rs 55 lakh. Furthermore, Munich in all initial queries maintained that it spent absolutely nothing on the PM’s one-day visit to the German city. On being consistently pursued, it showed a sum of Rs 6 lakh as incurred on accompanying officers.

Similarly, the consulate general of India in New York said it did not spend anything for the PM’s show at the Madison Square Garden, which was organised by the Indian community. But it lets out that it did pay for booking studio space at the venue for the DD crew to enable it to telecast the PM’s address live (expenditure was debited to Prasar Bharati).

Indian embassies in other countries have refused to part with information on specious grounds. While the reply from the Sri Lankan high commission states that it has only partial details and that many bills are still under process, the embassy in South Korea maintained that gathering the information from different departments needed “enormous resource allocation”. The Indian embassy in Japan too denied information on grounds that it “will disproportionately divert the resources of the public authority”. France, on its part, simply forwarded the application to the MEA and PMO, who have not bothered to respond since. Curiously, even as the permanent mission and the consulate general of India in New York have provided detailed break-ups of all expenses undertaken by them during Modi’s visit there, Washington has refused to part with the information stating that it needs to be collated from different departments.

Cost details of foreign visits by Vajpayee, Manmohan on the PM’s website

Some idea of Modi’s expenses, which include the official entourage that acc­ompanies him, is available from his Australia visit. The prime minister spent no more than six hours of his five days in Australia in November last year on a visit to Sydney. Those six hours—to attend a reception hosted by the Indian community there—cost the government of India over Rs 1.40 crore. That entire trip, records of the high commission reveal, cost at least Rs 13 core. This amount too reflects only a small part of the expenditure on the trip. It only covers hotel expenses, taxi bills and travel allowance to officers in the Narendra Modi entourage.

Somewhat inexplicably, while a five-day trip to Australia led to an expenditure of Rs 13 crore by the Indian mission there, a five-day trip to the US appears to have led to much less expenditure, approximately Rs 7 crore. Judging by calculations of the nuggets of information available, at least Rs 50 crore has been spent by Indian embassies in 16 of the 29 countries he has visited so far. Even that (decidedly partial) information was obtained after considerable time and effort. So much for openness and transparency in Digital India.

After the story was filed, the Central Public Information Officer at the Prime Minister's Office, Pushpendra Kumar Sharma, ?told Outlook that:? ?"All RTI queries received by the PMO are answered to the best of our knowledge, based on whatever information is available with the PMO. The MEA is the nodal agency coordinating all foreign trips of the Prime Minister. Therefore, there is little information available with the PMO in this regard. Such queries should be addressed to the RTI cell at the MEA."

By Pavithra S. Rangan in New Delhi