PM Modi greets before leaving for a trip to Bhutan in August 2019 (Archive)
New Delhi:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited 58 countries since 2015 at a total cost of Rs 517 crore, the government said on Tuesday in a written response to a question posed in Rajya Sabha.
The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, V Muraleedharan, said the prime minister was the one who visited the United States and Russia the most: five visits each. Prime Minister Modi has also visited China, with whom India is involved in a long and serious border clash in eastern Ladakh, five times, he added.
Other countries visited by the Prime Minister include Singapore, Germany, France, the United Arab Emirates and Sri Lanka, Muraleedharan said.
“Total spending on these visits was 517.82 million rupees,” he said, in a report by the PTI news agency, noting that while some of the visits were part of multinational trips, others were independent bilateral visits.
The Prime Minister’s last trip abroad was to Brazil (in November last year) to attend a BRICS summit (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). He also visited Thailand earlier that month.
Prime Minister Modi has made no visits in 2020 due to the global lockdown on the coronavirus pandemic.
Muraleedharan told parliament that the visits had improved other countries’ understanding of India’s perspectives on bilateral, regional and global issues.
The visits also helped strengthen economic relations in a wide range of sectors, including trade and investment, technology, defense collaboration and people-to-people contact, the minister said.
However, in December 2018, the government said that more than Rs 2 billion had been spent on the prime minister’s overseas visits since June 2014; these, he said, included expenses on chartered flights, aircraft maintenance and hotline facilities.
According to the data (shared by then Minister of State for Foreign Affairs VK Singh), a total of Rs 1,583.18 million was spent on the maintenance of the Prime Minister’s aircraft and Rs 429.25 million on chartered flights during the period between June 15, 2014 and December. 3, 2018. Total direct line spending was Rs 9.11 crore.
While the Prime Minister’s visits have been widely praised by many for boosting India’s profile abroad and helping to generate FDI (foreign direct investment), the opposition has at times criticized the costs involved and questioned the timing.
Before national elections in April and May last year, Rahul Gandhi targeted Prime Minister Modi for traveling abroad while there was a crisis in the agricultural sector. Prime Minister Modi’s BJP eventually swept the national elections, consolidating his tenure for another five years.
With input from PTI
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