PM Modi and BJP leaders’ political rallies at public cost

No Prime Minister before Narendra Modi has travelled as frequently to the states. Prime Minister Modi typically visits BJP-ruled states more often though. The frequency of his visits increases before elections. What is more, he has never shied away from using these visits for politics and propaganda.

Even Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who lived for years in Lucknow and got elected from the city, did not visit Uttar Pradesh as frequently as Modi, who represents Varanasi in the Lok Sabha. Although most of these visits are tagged to some official function or the other, the PM generally does not miss attacking the opposition and making political statements.

Writing after PM Modi laid the foundation of a new airport at Jewar in Greater Noida (UP) on November 25, former BJP leader and Union Minister Yashwant Sinha reflected, “…The Prime Minister and the Chief Minister of UP, especially the latter, were in full form and used the occasion to the hilt for politicking. I was told right at the beginning of my official career that the ruling party and the government are two separate entities and the former should not encroach upon jurisdictions that solely belong to the latter.”

He went on to point out: “One of the conventions that developed over time is that monies from the government’s exchequer will not be used or, more aptly, misused to promote personal or party agenda. There is a ‘Lakshman Rekha’ dividing the government and the ruling party. But does anyone even remember this distinction today?”

Public funds are used to arrange PM’s rallies. That should ordinarily be reason enough for him to refrain from utilising the platform for political messaging. But then he fancies himself as a disruptor of conventions. And neither the Election Commission nor the media find anything amiss any longer in ruling party leaders going overboard at official functions. The Lakshman Rekha between ‘public’ work and ‘political work’ has disappeared.

Old timers do remember the Allahabad High Court judgment in the mid-1970s when the then Prime Minister was unseated from the Lok Sabha while upholding the election petition filed by Socialist leader Raj Narayan. The court took cognizance then that state government’s resources were used to make arrangements for the PM’s election rally; and that her polling agent’s resignation from government service had not been formally accepted when he started working with her party and political team.

Prime Minister Modi is set to visit Uttar Pradesh again. This time, he will visit Varanasi for three days from December 13 when he will inaugurate the Kashi Vishwanath corridor. In the first week of December, he is scheduled to visit Allahabad to attend a mass wedding. He will also go to Gorakhpur where he will ‘inaugurate’ the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) there and a fertilizer factory.

These visits come in the wake of the Prime Minister’s recent visit to Lucknow (where he participated in the State DGP’s conference), to Sultanpur (to inaugurate Purvanchal Expressway) and to Jhansi (where he laid the foundation of Bundelkhand Expressway). Politics of course was never far behind.

The questions related to the cost of such Prime Ministerial visits, their utility and who pay the billsare neither raised nor answered.

A bureaucrat in the Home department in Lucknow estimates that on every visit by the PM, the state government’s expenses would be in the region of one crore or 10 million Rupees. He claimed that the ruling party BJP spent even more in transporting people and arranging for their food. For the Sultanpur rally of the PM, the administration had allowed the diversion of 2000 buses to fetch people from nearby villages or adjacent districts. They certainly caused disruptions and inconvenienced the regular commuters.

The expenditure incurred by the Union Government on the PM’s planes, security, helicopters and on his entourage are not known. But the costs, the official conceded, would not be less than 10 million rupees. What is more, the costs also vary depending on the number of places the PM chooses to visit on the same day and the number of rallies he addresses.

“Prime Minister’s visits have both tangible and intangible costs. Construction of helipad (if PM comes in the chopper) or making arrangements for the public meeting can be measured but the cost of deployment of police and Home Guards, officers etc. cannot be estimated,” an official said in Lucknow.

Planning and arrangements for the PM’s visits start a week or more in advance. Normal work in the districts come to a standstill as officials are diverted for ‘VIP Duty’. There is no estimate of the cost of such disruptions and delays though.

That is why, it would seem, past Prime Ministers visited states only when necessary and kept them low key and businesslike. They did not turn every visit to a political event. Nor did they use the visits for political messaging and attacking political rivals—that would have given them an unfair advantage and the level playing field would have been breached.

Nobody in Uttar Pradesh has kept a count of Prime Ministerial visits to the state this year. But with the assembly elections due in just three months, they are certain they would get to see and hear the PM a lot more.

(This article was first published in National Herald on Sunday)