Indian ministers' foreign travel plans have been grounded by the government's austerity drive. Till July 1 this year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had turned down as many as 24 foreign trip applications from members of his ministerial council, compared to 10 such refusals in the whole of 2010.
The change is stark considering that the PM had earlier been obliging almost all his colleagues. In 2009, after the UPA returned to power, just one tour proposal was nixed. The only advice at that time was to avoid business class travel and ministers grudgingly flew, as one of them famously said, "cattle-class".
The curbs began in mid-2010 and since then a stringent procedure is in place for ministers' overseas travel. The list of ministers whose tour plans have been rejected, obtained by TOI through an RTI application, includes Vayalar Ravi, Farooq Abdullah, Salman Khurshid, Sushilkumar Shinde, Jairam Ramesh, Kumari Selja, M S Gill, Jitin Prasada, Sachin Pilot, Subodh Kant Sahay, Ashwani Kumar, Harish Rawat, Preneet Kaur, Ajay Maken and Bharatsinh Solanki.
Tourism minister Sahay has turned out to be the unluckiest of all. Three of his tour proposals - to Germany in March; Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia in May and Canada in June - have been rejected.
Civil aviation minister Vayalar Ravi is among those who have been grounded twice. First, his proposal to visit the US, Guadeloupe and France in the third week of March was turned down. Then in June, PM rejected his proposed tour to Toronto, Canada.
Similarly, renewable energy minister Farooq Abdullah was denied permission to go to Germany in March and to Italy in June. Power minister Sushilkumar Shinde was asked to stay back when he wanted to visit the UK in March this year. He was made to give up another tour to Stockholm towards the end of March.
Housing and urban poverty alleviation minister Kumari Selja had to drop her trip to Kenya in April and forego another visit to Hungary and Italy in May-June. Law minister Salman Khurshid was not permitted to go to Doha in February and was told to miss out another planned visit to North Carolina in the USA in May.
Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, then the environment minister, was asked to cancel a plan to visit New York in February.
Even MoS external affairs Preneet Kaur has been asked to cancel an expensive 10-day visit to Doha and the Baltic states. Usually, the external affairs ministry is accorded priority and its foreign tour proposals are seldom discarded.
The spate of rejections began in May 2010 when the PM turned down tour requests from C P Joshi, Jairam Ramesh, Kanti Lal Bhuria, Subodh Kant Sahay, D Purandeshwari, Vincent Pala, former telecom minister A Raja and a few other members of the ministerial council. In mid-2010, it was specified that benefits accruing from a ministerial tour would be carefully weighed before a decision is made on giving permission.
Casual junkets have since been categorically refused. The ministers have been told through circulars that the government exchequer would not fund such tours. Discreet signals went out from the PMO to the more enthusiastic among the ministers that their tours had to benefit the country in some tangible way.
The list of tours undertaken by the ministers in the two years of UPA 2 makes an interesting study. As expected, the senior and junior external affairs ministers, commerce minister and the minister for overseas affairs remain the most travelled members of the Cabinet.
Next came the then minister of environment and forests, Jairam Ramesh, who went on nine official trips abroad in 2009. In 2010, Ramesh's ministry sent 15 tour proposals for the minister, signalling that the environment ministry was becoming increasingly important globally. Of these, two were cancelled, one withdrawn and one was not approved. Ramesh still went on 11 official tours.
The PM, it appears, has been gracious to his coalition partners, granting them ready approval on most occasions. Sharad Pawar, Farooq Abdullah, Dayanidhi Maran and Praful Patel have gone abroad many times, though it must be said that in the case of Pawar, Maran and Patel, a large number of these trips were 'private' and not sponsored by the government.
Kamal Nath too has been a frequent flier. So has Kapil Sibal. Not just Preneet Kaur, but also her former colleague Shashi Tharoor travelled a great deal when he was a minister. Kumari Selja and D Purandeswari (MoS HRD) too have flown out to several countries in the past two years. Even younger ministers like Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot and Jitin Prasada have had a fair share of foreign trips in the past two years.
Source: www.economictimes.com
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Gaurav Agarwal
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DENIP Consultants Pvt Ltd
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