The total expenses incurred by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his first 31 Air India trips in the last four years stands at Rs 387.36 crore, which is marginally higher than his predecessor Manmohan Singh’s expense of Rs 386.35 crore incurred for the same number of trips between 2009 and 2013, Economic Times has reported.
As per the infographic by Economic Times, both Modi and Manmohan Singh used Air India for 31 foreign trips during four years of their tenures. In these four years though PM Modi went on five additional foreign trips to neighbourhood countries via Indian Air Force’s BBJ aircraft, which wasn’t billed to the government.
Even though the Congress has been accusing PM Modi of going on an exorbitantly high number of foreign trips, the figures quoted by the report reveal that total days abroad in the first four years stood at 155 for Modi and 131 for Singh.
When it comes to the total trips abroad till date, Singh took a total of 38 trips during the entirety of UPA-2, Modi is currently on his 44th trip abroad. As per a New Indian Express report, Modi’s nine-day visit to France, Germany and Canada had cost the maximum at 31 crores.
Incidentally, the media had reported a few days back that the total expenses incurred on PM Modi’s foreign trips amounted to Rs 1484 crore out of which Rs 1088.42 crore was spent maintaining his aircraft. The current Economic Times report has carried a quote from government officials who stated that a similar maintenance cost of Rs 220 crore per year was also incurred during the UPA period.
As per a report published about 10 days ago prior to his trip to three African countries, PM Modi had travelled to 84 countries during his tenure. This has been broken up into a visit to 13 countries during 2014-15, 24 countries in 2015-16, 18 in 2016-17, 19 in 2017-18 and 13 so far in 2018 including his African tour.
