Incomplete record of Prime Minister's foreign trips, reveals RTI query

Mumbai: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office is lagging behind in maintaining records as the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has either “not received” or is still “processing” bills of chartered flights for 17 of the 27 foreign visits Mr Modi made since May 2014. This was revealed by the accounts department of the PMO in response to an RTI query.

Ever since taking charge as Prime Minister, Mr Modi has visited 44 countries in his 27 foreign visits. He visited the US four times. Mr Modi has visited Bhutan, Nepal, France, China, Russia, Japan, Afghanistan, Singapore and Uzbekistan.
His first foreign visit as Prime Minister was to Bhutan in 2014, and the last till date was to Japan in November 2016, which was shortly after the announcement of demonetisation.

However, according to the RTI reply, the accounts department of the PMO said it is yet to receive bills of expenditure on chartered flights for nine foreign visits that were made by Mr Modi between 2015 and 2016. Whereas, for eight foreign visits undertaken by the Prime Minister, the PMO said the bills are under process.

According to the data, Rs 77.91 crore was spent in 2014 on chartered flights that were used for travelling for five foreign visits to countries like Brazil, Japan and Bhutan. However, the PMO did not share the data for costs incurred by using Indian Air Force’s Boeing Business Jet for visits to countries such as Singapore, Bangladesh and Iran in 2015 and 2016.