Now Reading: RTI: Railway ministers spent Rs 8.9 crore on chartered flights since 2007
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RTI: Railway ministers spent Rs 8.9 crore on chartered flights since 2007
RTI: Railway ministers spent Rs 8.9 crore on chartered flights since 2007
The Ministry of Railways spent nearly Rs 8.9 crore on 33 chartered aircraft trips involving 11 railway ministers and ministers of state since 2007, according to documents obtained through an RTI. The…
The Ministry of Railways spent nearly Rs 8.9 crore on 33 chartered aircraft trips involving 11 railway ministers and ministers of state since 2007, according to documents obtained through an RTI. The records show Lalu Prasad Yadav used chartered aircraft the most (12 times), but Suresh Prabhu had the highest total bill at Rs 3.01 crore, spending roughly Rs 75 lakh per trip.
Current minister Ashwini Vaishnaw used a chartered aircraft only once, to visit the 2023 Balasore train crash site, costing Rs 25 lakh. Lalu's three flood-related flights during the 2008 Bihar floods cost close to Rs 30 lakh. The level of detail in the records has thinned over time, with later entries often describing the purpose only as "official".
The aircraft used also changed over the years: earlier flights were mostly on Indian Air Force planes, while from 2018 onwards, trips were chartered through IRCTC. Piyush Goyal's tenure saw eight IRCTC-booked trips between 2018 and 2020, including a Delhi-Chennai-Mumbai-Delhi journey costing nearly Rs 39 lakh.
Indian Opinion Analysis
Chartered travel by ministers is not illegal, but the RTI data shows a pattern of shifting record-keeping that makes public scrutiny harder. The earlier detailed entries, naming specific locations, rivers or train numbers, contrast sharply with later entries that simply say "official programmes." This matters because the total Rs 8.9 crore is spent from public funds, and the stated reasons, accidents, floods, inaugurations, are rarely questioned individually. The key check is parliamentary oversight, but with less detail, even that is blunted. What remains unasked is whether regular airline or train tickets would have sufficed for some of these trips, and whether the use of IRCTC, the railways' own ticketing arm, avoids competitive bidding. The next step for transparency would be a CAG audit or a parliamentary committee review of all such travel.
Source: businesstoday.in
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
