Foreign trip expenses of CM’s wife, adviser, mins under wraps

Thiruvananthapuram: The state government — which skirted RTI and assembly queries on expenditure of official foreign trips by the chief minister — has also been ‘collecting information’ on the foreign trips made by cabinet ministers and the expenses it incurred from 2016. Assembly questions, raised by MLAs KNA Khader, O Rajagopal and N A Nellikkunnu regarding expenditure during the foreign trips of ministers and accompanying officials, received the same reply: information being collected.

Khader, who raised the question in June, said that he is yet to receive a reply. Activists, who sought information on expenses incurred during the foreign trips undertaken by the chief minister’s wife (Kamala) and media adviser (John Brittas) through RTI, have not received an answer.

Ernakulam-based RTI activist Govindan Namboothiri filed an application in August, seeking information on the number of foreign trips in which the chief minister was accompanied by his wife and media adviser and the expenses incurred by government between 2016 and 2019 .

He first filed an application with the chief minister’s office, which was then forwarded to general administration department-political (GAD). GAD’s reply was ‘information not available with public authority’. “I filed a detailed questionnaire and none of my questions were answered properly. I’m will approach state information commission,” he said.

Activist M T Thomas, who had filed an RTI application seeking the details of expenses incurred by CM’s media adviser during his foreign trips, said GAD was not ready to share details related to CMO. He had also requested the travel and hotel expenses incurred by CM’s former economic adviser Geetha Gopinath. “GAD did not provide the details. Though I filed an appeal, still it was not furnished. Further appeals did not yield information,” he said.

During LDF tenure, 23 ministerial staff undertook foreign trips till May 2019, of which 17 were personal and six official. Additional private secretary Deepu P Nair accompanied labour minister T P Ramakrishnan to the UAE, Singapore, Kuwait and Qatar.

Additional private secretary Roy Tom Lal accompanied the minister for fisheries to Jakarta. Private secretary C P Pramod accompanied the minister for culture to the UAE. Additional private secretary T R Anilkumar flew to the UAE with the minister for agriculture,

Additional private secretary C R Mahesh went to Sri Lanka with the minister for agriculture. Additional private secretary G Sreekumar accompanied minister for forests K Raju to Germany.