Details of travel to foreign nations by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been released by Prime Minster’s Office.
It has the details of the 44 countries Modi has visited till November 2016. The details about the expenses incurred on chartered flights used by Modi state that most of them were bilateral trips.
The details available suggest that he travelled to the United States four times and toured twice the countries of Japan, Nepal, Singapore, France, China, Uzbekistan, Russia and Afghanistan. He has also covered all continents except Antarctica.
The maximum expenses incurred were on the chartered flights PM Modi took to visit France, Germany and Canada – over Rs 31 crore. The trip lasted nine days from April 9 -17, 2015.
His central Asia tour included visits to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the span of nine days. Similarly, the PM’s African tour came in July 2016 when he travelled to Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya.
The prime minister has visited all his SAARC neighbours as well. He has travelled to Nepal twice, once as a state visit and the other to attend the SAARC summit. He has even touched down in Pakistan once in December, 2015 while he was en route home from Afghanistan. His visit to Lahore coincided with the birthday of Pakistan Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif.
The expenses on the foreign tours of PM Modi are met out of the budget head – “Cabinet Ministers – Maintenance of PM’s aircraft – Other charges” under Demand no, 47. While he used chartered flights on most trips, visits to neighbouring countries like Nepal and Bangladesh were done aboard the Boeing Business Jets (BBJs) of the Indian Air Force.
Here is a short list:
- Bhutan,June 2014 – Rs 2.45 crore
- Brazil, July 2014 – Rs 20.35 crore
- Myanmar, Australia and Fiji, November 2014 – Rs 22.58 crore
- China, Mongolia and South Korea, April 2015 – Rs 15.15 crore
- Ireland and USA, September 2015 – Rs 18.46 crore
- Belgium, USA and Saudi Arabia – April 2016, Rs 15.85 crore
- Vietnam and China – September 2016, Rs 9.53 crore
The full list is available in the website of PMO.
Post Your Comments