M A I N   N E W S

4 Years, 135 Junkets
What’s their trip, anyway?
Ajay Banerjee
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 21
The bureaucracy in Punjab, known for being “high-flying” in its style of functioning, has aptly justified this sobriquet in the past four-and-a-half years. More than 135 foreign trips were undertaken by IAS officers of the state during this period while the preferred destinations were the US, Canada, Europe and of course, China.

Such was frequency of visits that a few members of the service could even qualify for the “frequent flier” discounts offered by international airlines.

The Tribune has documents relating to the details of each foreign trip of certain IAS officers from June 2006, just four months after the Amarinder Singh led-Congress regime was voted to power- till the end of September 2006.

The details should have come out earlier. The Shiromani Akali Dal MLA from Gidderbaha, Mr Manpreet Singh Badal, had asked for information on the issue on the floor of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha. However, the question could not be answered due to paucity of time in that session and the information on foreign trips was kept under wraps. Three months later, The Tribune has obtained the information through independent sources.

It reveals that the Punjab Government or its boards and corporations funded these visits that cost nearly Rs 2.90 crore by way of airline tickets and travelling allowances. Undoubtedly, some of these visits may have been fruitful and helped the state. However, the outcome of some is still to be seen.

Even in case of “successful trips” to transfer technology, especially in horticulture, nobody questioned if similar experiments have been successful in India and could the same technology be used successfully in Punjab.

The nature of visits range from mobilising donations for the Anandpur Sahib Heritage Complex to the exploration of market for Verka products in Dubai. One officer set out to explore the possibilities of exporting wheat in March 2005 while a year later in March 2006, the country was importing it!

One official has headed trade delegations to nations like Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Columbia and on another trip he headed a delegations to Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Czechoslovakia. What the Punjab industry gained from it is not known and what was the quantum of increase of trade with these nations is still a mystery.

The classic case is of a senior bureaucrat, who visited a museum of Sikh heritage in Canada in April/ May 2004 and the records of the government show that he went again to the very same museum, three months later in July 2004. The total expenditure was more than Rs 7 lakh.

Mr Himmat Singh, who has been on 14 foreign trips, tops the list. Following him is the top man in information technology, Mr N.S. Kalsi, who been on 10 trips. Interestingly in implementing e-governance, Punjab lags behind and is nowhere when compared with the southern states.

Next is Mr Arun Goel with seven trips. Mr K.R. Lakhanpal, Mr P.K. Verma ( now retired) and Mr D.S. Jaspal have undertaken six trips each. In case of Mr Jaspal, three of these trips have been to Pakistan. The former Chief Secretary, Mr Jai Singh Gill, has been on five trips while Mr S.C. Aggarwal, Ms Ravneet Kaur, Mr A.R. Talwar, Mr Vishwajeet Khanna, Mr S.S. Channy, Mr D.S. Bains and Ms Geetika Kalha have been on three trips each.

The Punjab Agro Export Corporation has sponsored 14 such trips, the Punjab Agro Industries Corporation and the Punjab Small Industries and Export Corporation have sponsored eight such trips while the Anandpur Sahib Foundation has financed five of these trips.

Even the defunct Puncom had funded a few such trips. Markfed and Milkfed also sponsored a few trips while the Punjab Infotech funded 10 such trips of the bureaucrats.