PMO Says It Doesn't Keep Records Of Expenses On PM's Domestic Visits

Mumbai: The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has said that it does not keep records of the expenses incurred on the domestic visits of the prime minister.

Mumbai-based activist Anil Galgali had filed an RTI query with the PMO requesting the nature and details of the expenses incurred on the foreign as well as domestic visits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and union council of ministers since May 2014.

Replying to his query, Under Secretary and CPIO of the PMO Praveen Kumar stated that the documentation of the expenses incurred on domestic visits of the prime minister is not part of the maintaining records and info related to the expenditure on domestic visits does not come in the purview of a single authority because such domestic visits are organised by the different public authorities.

Kumar also replied that the prime minister's tours related to the poll campaigns are not official ones and the PMO does not have to incur any expenditure on these visits and therefore, details cannot be provided.

On the prime minister's foreign visits and expenses incurred on these, the PMO advised Galgali to go through the PMO's website to get the details.

For information related to union council of ministers' expenses on their foreign tours, the PMO transferred Galgali's query to M&G as well as Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) citing that the information sought more closely to them.

Galgali said, "Following PMO's advice, I went through PMO's portal, but did not find any records of the prime minister's unofficial domestic visits and the expenses." Modi has recently visited several states including Maharashtra,

Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Odisha, Andhra
Pradesh, Telangana, Assam and Jammu and Kashmir to address poll rallies.

According to the PMO website, the expenses on domestic visits of the prime minister are met out of the budget of Ministry of Defence, while the expenses on foreign tours of the prime minister are met out of the budget head "Cabinet Ministers Maintenance of PM's aircraft Other charges".

According to the PMO website, Modi had made 49 foreign trips since May 2014 till February 22, 2019. It also lists the expenses incurred on chartered flights on these 49 foreign trips.