Maharashtra has been facing an acute water shortage due to drought on one end and the Government advised its staff to keep a check on expenses, but, on the other end its own Ministers have indulged in extravagant flight travel in the past, an average of Rs2.10 crore annually
The Forest Minister Dr Patangrao Kadam has outshone others and has emerged as a torch-bearer in this flight plan. He has grossed only Rs43 lakh in air travel expenses in the past three years. This information was provided to RTI activist Anil Galgali, who had sought the details from the Pay & Accounts Department, Government of Maharashtra.
Anil Galgali, chairman of Athak Seva Sangh & RTI activist had raised a query to the Pay & Accounts Department, Government of Maharashtra, whereby he sought information on travel expenditure incurred by all the ministers of the state government. The Department provided Anil Galgali with information of approved expenses from November 2009 to January 2013. The details contain travel expenses incurred by the chief minister and his council of ministers.
In the past three year the 43 Ministers have spent Rs6.30 crore which means annually Rs2.10 crore. The table below shows the top 10 highest expenses by ministers on air travel.
No | Name of Minister | Amount in Rs (lakh) |
1 | Dr Patangrao Kadam | 43.00 |
2 | Anil Deshmukh | 39.54 |
3 | Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil | 36.00 |
4 | Fauziya Khan | 32.48 |
5 | Narayan Rane | 31.29 |
6 | Dr Nitin Raut | 28.93 |
7 | Sunil Tatkare | 26.88 |
8 | Balasaheb Thorat | 24.95 |
9 | Jayant Patil | 21.70 |
10 | Jaydutt Kshirsagar | 20.83 |
Ex chief minister Ashok Chavan spent Rs1.46 lakh between 8 November 2009 and10 November 2010. However chief minister (CM), Prithviraj Chavan (Rs6.32 lakh), deputy CM Ajit Pawar (Rs10.28 lakh), home minster R R Patil (Rs14.35 lakh), public works department(PWD) minister Chaggan Bhujbal (Rs18 lakh), Naseem Khan (Rs18.76 lakh), Rajendra Darda (Rs19.29 lakh) spent on air travel.
It is important to note here that the Government has its own plane and helicopters to facilitate the travel of its ministers. These expenses are over and above the expenses that they must have incurred there. It is also important to note that, apart from the ministers, the CM's personal secretaries Sanjay Yadav and Abhijit Ghorpade have spent Rs79,642 and Rs61,138 respectively in the past eight months only. The other ministers’ staff expenses were not provided by the department.
“It needs to be mentioned here that though there is no ceiling to the expenses to be incurred on this account, it is a Moral duty of the Ministers to observe self restraint on issues like these specially when the state is facing its worst crisis,” said Galgali. Anil Galgali in a letter written to the CM has appealed that the Ministers should voluntarily reduce these expenses by opting to travel by trains and state transport (ST) buses, as it can be seen that they have used flight mode to destinations which are connected to the ST and train route.
The other ministers also spent huge amounts on air travel. It is given below:
No | Name of Minister | Amount in Rs (lakh) |
1 | Shivajirao Moghe | 19.73 |
2 | Padmakar Valvi | 15.83 |
3 | Sanjay Devtale | 15.41 |
4 | Ranjeet Kamble | 14.79 |
5 | Suresh Shetty | 13.81 |
6 | Rajendra Mulak | 13.71 |
7 | DP Sawant | 13.60 |
8 | Varsha Gaikwad | 12.59 |
9 | Vijay Vaddetivar | 10.35 |
10 | Hasan Musarif | 09.75 |
11 | Prakash Solankhe | 09.57 |
12 | Prof Laxman Dhoble | 09.43 |
13 | Babanrao Pachpute | 09.20 |
14 | Rajesh Tope | 09.01 |
15 | Harshwardhan Patil | 08.62 |
16 | Gulabrao Devkar | 08.24 |
17 | Subhash Zanak | 07.66 |
18 | Bhaskar Jadhav | 07.57 |
19 | Abdul Sattar | 06.95 |
20 | Dr Vijay Kumar Gavit | 05.69 |
21 | Ramraje Naik-Nimbalkar | 04.66 |
22 | Rajendra Gavit | 02.50 |
23 | Sachin Ahir | 01.88 |
24 | Manohar Naik | 01.35 |
25 | Ganesh Naik | 00.39 |
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Were these undertaken in order to carry out some job assigned to them? If so, what was the result?
If you take further study of the helicopter (chopper) rides,
many would be for short distances and for doing odd jobs, even like "opening ceremonies", which could have been done by using cars allotted to them!
on the whole, these people are irresponsible and do not care for public money being spent in such reckless manner, because no body questions, and nothing happens after such questions are raised in public. Some meaningless explantion is given and soon, the matter simply "dies" and gets buried in the files!