New Delhi, March 30
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has asked all his ministerial colleagues to send him a report soon after returning from a foreign trip indicating the main purpose and the extent to which the issues being pursued were achieved.
Dr Manmohan Singh has also desired that these ministers also put to paper points for follow up action and any other significant matter arising out of it that deserves to be noted.
Aimed at curbing wasteful expenditure in several ways, the Prime Minister has impressed upon his ministers to desist from going on long tours abroad thereby causing considerable dislocation. Stressing that no trips abroad should be proposed when Parliament is in session, the Prime Minister said ministers should attend international conferences only “where attendance at that level is insisted upon.”
Though the Prime Minister’s intent is clear that the ministers should avoid purposeless junkets abroad and should have a clear perspective of how India should get across its views forcefully, these frequent missives and directives has touched a raw nerve among certain ministers who are not in the rat race of taking off to glamour destinations beyond the country’s shores.
As evidenced in the past and with summer round the corner, the ministers might be a shade guarded in chalking out their foreign yatras in beating the heat. Though some of them may be junior ministers, they are overseeing the job of their senior political bosses who have had to quit the Manmohan Singh government due to their own compulsions.
Keen to
streamline and infuse accountability in the civil service for giving an added impetus to the socio-economic programmes of the Congress-led UPA government, the Prime Minister has
called for transparency and dynamism on the part of the ministers in achieving the set goals and objectives.
In a communication to all ministers earlier this month on March 7, Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary T.K.A Nair noted that Dr Manmohan Singh has desired detailed reports from them immediately on their return from a foreign trip. Within the next 10 days on March 16, Cabinet Secretary B.K. Chaturvedi also wrote a letter to members of the Prime Minister’s council of ministers recalling the instructions and guidelines issued in November 1995 pertaining to foreign travel.
Mr Chaturvedi said, “The Prime Minister has observed that long tours abroad by ministers are causing considerable dislocation. He has desired that no visits abroad should be proposed by ministers during the session of Parliament and that at other times also, only those visits should henceforth be undertaken by ministers where they have to go for international conferences and where “attendance at that level is insisted upon.”
