Around 117 crore was spent by Air India in the year 2015-2016 when PM Modi was on a foreign travel which is 25 percent increased as compared to the previous year. He visited 22 countries which included Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, UK, Ireland, UAE, China, Mongolia, Korea, Germany, France and Russia. In the year 2013-2014, when PM Manmohan Singh was on foreign travel, around Rs.108 crores were spent.
As per an RTI application by Lokesh Batra, Comm (retd), it is stated that around 117 crore was spent by Air India until December 2015 and around 94 crore in the year 2014-2015. Modi had visited around 12 countries in 1st year including Mauritius, Brazil, Seychelles, Japan, Fiji, Myanmar, Australia and Bhutan as per Ministry of External affairs.
View some expensive trips of PM Modi!
The most expensive trip of PM Modi was in April 2015 while he visited Germany, Canada and France which had cost around Rs.31 crores. Then several agreements were signed by the PM in Canada and France and he attended Hannover Messe too. His trip to Korea, Mongolia and China had cost around 15 crores. A similar bill was raised for the Central Asia visit of the PM. This included countries included Kyrgyz Republic, Turkmenistan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan etc.
Modi was also in headlines when he attended the wedding of PM Nawaz Sharif’s granddaughter. However, not much was disclosed by him as to how much was spent on the visit.
In the year 2014-2015, PM took the most expensive trip to Myanmar and Australia wherein around 22 crores were spent by him and this was followed by Brazil wherein 20 crores were spent. Repeated trips were made by him to Singapore, Nepal and United States since the time he came to power in May 2014.
In 2016, the PM has visited Saudi Arabia, United States and Belgium and is expected to be in Iran this month. There is a schedule of him returning in June to US.