Ministers rack up 3.67cr fuel bills
RTI Response Reveals Consumption By 31 Of 84 Ministries In Past 2 Years
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Daily/skins/TOINEW/navigator.asp?Daily=TOIBG&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&AW=1319694133360
Hemali Chhapia TNN
Mumbai: In the winter of 2009, a few months after the Congress announced a financial austerity drive for its staff, Sonia Gandhi famously travelled by economy class. But what UPA government's ministers probably saved on air fares, they seem to have more than made up on land.
Fuel bills of Union ministers, since the financial curbs were put in place, were accessed by RTI activist Chetan Kothari. Merely 31 of the 84 ministries provided information on their 59 official cars that have racked up a bill of Rs 3.67 crore.
In the two years between 2009 and 2011, the information technology ministers billed the government Rs 37.31 lakh for the fuel that their official cars consumed.
The fuel bills of rural development ministers – Vilasrao Deshmukh and the young MoS Agatha Sangma – ran up to Rs 17.17 lakh. That translates to a daily average travel of 214 kilometres (if the car does 10 km/litre).
The high fuel tab indicates fiddling of bills by lower officials, the ministers in all likelihood being unmindful of it. "If the government's serious about containing unnecessary expenditure, then there has be a way to prevent this kind of spending on petrol," said M Govinda Rao, member of the Economic Advisory Council to the PM , with whom the RTI details were shared. "This is the tax payers' money and it can't be wasted like this. If there is such a divide between the people and the politicians, then it's obvious the latter are working for themselves, not for the people," he added.
Abhay Pethe, head of the school of economics at the University of Mumbai, termed the bills as "ridiculously high". "The ministers need to change their cars, their drivers or their travel habits. They need to send out the right signals to the masses and that calls for right actions from them," Pethe added. "The Union ministers mostly use their cars in Delhi. If they have to travel outside or visit their constituency, they take flights. This kind of petrol usage is neither economical nor environmentally justifiable," said Satyanarayana Sangita, professor at the Institute of Social and Economic Change.
Kothari has lodged a complaint against ministries which haven't provided fuel expenditure details with the chief information ministry.
Sudhakar Yelda, a professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, who analysed the information received, said Indian cars are designed to run an average of 15,000 km every year. "Although the usage by ministers is not high, it is more than what a car is cut out for," he said.
His views are not supported by others. Director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, S Parasuraman, said it wasn't humanly possible to travel so much. "With no cap on entitlements, this is bound to happen. Ours is a country that is not accountable to public money. Till that doesn't happen, we will drive into situations like these."
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