Gujarat govt blocked RTI info on Narendra Modi’s own foreign jaunts

Ahmedabad : Even as Chief Minister Narendra Modi is repeatedly demanding that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh disclose the amount of public money spent on Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s foreign trips, it now turns out his own government failed to furnish similar details about his trips abroad sought by activists under the Right to Information Act.

Ramesh Joshi, a native of Kutch who runs an NGO Kutch Ladayak Manch in Mumbai, had sent a RTI query to the Chief Minister’s Office on August 23, 2012, seeking details of “how much money the Gujarat government had spent on Modi’s foreign trips since he became chief minister till August 15, 2012”. He had also sought detailed records of such expenditure.

To this, public information officer at the CMO, D B Zala, had replied, “Your query is very detailed and connected to various government departments and public bodies, so this information will have to be collated.”

Zala added it was not the responsibility of the CMO to collect and give out such information.

Quoting rules, he said, “To create information is outside the scope of a public body. If the related information is available with various public departments, collecting such information will amount to ‘creating’ such information.”

Zala went on to suggest to Joshi, “If you still want the information, you can apply to different government departments.”

Joshi told The Indian Express that he had asked the Gujarat government to provide information on the money spent on Modi’s helicopters, chartered planes and foreign trips. “If the state government doesn’t keep such important information, there is not way the CM should raise fingers at someone else,” he said.

Similarly, Trupti Shah, a Vadodara-based activist, had filed an RTI application seeking details of travel expenses of Modi and his ministers during “Women Empowerment Sammelans” in 2007. However, five years later, Shah is yet to get answers.

According to Shah, the chief minister, along with his ministers, had visited 27 places across the state to organise these meetings ahead of the 2007 Assembly elections.

In one of the replies from the General Administration Department of the state government, Shah was informed that “as per information provided by the CMO, CM doesn’t mention the travelling expenses, so as far as travelling expenses of the CM is concerned, it is nil”.

In a press release on Tuesday, Shah said the last hearing in her case was held on September 26 in which Chief Information Commission officials reportedly expressed helplessness saying they had sought the information from the CMO but were refused.