A day after several Cabinet Ministers complained about the government’s new austerity drive, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today clarified that the restriction on first-class air travel was confined to domestic and not international flights.
The Finance Minister, who was questioned on these directives at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting, played down the controversy and put it down to some misunderstanding. His ministry had recently notified a 10 per cent cut in non-plan expenditure and issued directions that ministers and officials travel by economy class and refrain from holding conferences in five-star hotels.
Speaking to mediapersons at the Indian Women’s Press Corps today, Mukherjee said the measures prescribed by his ministry were already in existence but were not being adhered to strictly because of the comfortable economic situation. He explained that ministers, MPs and officials entitled to travel by executive class had been requested to take the economy class on domestic flights and for international flights they can travel club class instead of the first class.
Referring to the queries raised yesterday, Mukherjee said he had told his Cabinet colleagues that the financial advisors in their respective ministries would guide them through these directives.
The Finance Minister reiterated that ministers and officials should not hold big conferences in five-star hotels and instead use some of their own facilities which are equally good. All ministries, including the External Affairs Ministry and others, have their own conference halls apart from Vigyan Bhavan and Hyderabad House. He, however, added there was no bar on entertaining a foreign dignitary in a five-star hotel.
Mukherjee disclosed that he had also written to the presiding officers of the two Houses of Parliament requesting that the meetings of the various Parliamentary committees be held in Delhi as it would save on air travel and accommodation.
The Public Accounts Committee, Estimates Committee and the Committee on Public Undertakings should be exempt from this directive as its members needed to travel for work, he added.
Regarding salary cuts for MPs and legislators, Mukherjee said this decision was restricted to Congress parliamentarians as this was a party decision and the Congress could not impose it on other parties, including its allies. Congress president Sonia Gandhi had proposed at last month’s meeting of the aprty’s working committee that its MPs and MLAs take a 20 per cent salary cut in solidarity with those suffering because of drought conditions.
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