December 7, 2008

Government officials junketing abroad

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , — Sucheta Dalal @ 9:36 am
The Supreme Court of India

The Supreme Court of India

Foreign Junkets at taxpayers cost!

Foreign junkets are a disease that seems to afflict everybody in government, including those who are otherwise honest. They may not accept bribes, but think nothing about spending organisational money on frequent foreign trips — they include regulators, stock exchanges, bankers and central bankers.
What makes the trips lucrative for the government officials is a fat $500 per diem, plus first class travel and 5 star hotels which both generate enough of miles and loyalty credits to pay for a few foreign trips for the family. In addition, they liberally use our embassies abroad to provide them transport and to host events at which they can puff themselves up. All this is paid for us the taxpayers. Most of us now pay over 33% in direct taxes and over 12% in service charges on almost everything.
The media is nicely incorporated into the junketing. Journalists are invited in large numbers on foreign trips of the Prime Minister and Union Ministers; the government’s gatekeepers ensure that troublesome reports that ask inconvenient questions are kept out of these junkets. Some media houses do pay to send reporters on these official trips, but the payment is a fraction of the actual cost, perks and goodies that are handed out and government still has a say in who is invited. This nicely suppresses the criticism of extravagant expenditure.
Only RTI activists are willing and able to maintain the distance and objectivity to get

he truth through methodical applications. More power to them and we hope they ferret out a lot more.
Five years of P Chidambaram in the Finance Ministry has ensured that the few tax breaks available to us in the private sector have vanished. Unlike him, most Indians were neither interested in the capital market nor did they earn large wealth from trading (our investor population is under 20 million and almost half of that number owns less than 5 stocks). What is worse, Chidambaram has ensured that we are forced to collect taxes on behalf of the government. We have to get ourselves registered on tax networks and also spend time and money to deduct tax on payments (TDS, Service Tax) and credit it to the government account within a specified time – otherwise we are liable to severe punishment. This is for the non-salaried taxpayer.
For the salaried class most personal expenses such as telephones, homes, electricity, petrol, drivers and domestic helpers have to be made out of tax paid income while they are almost free perks for government employees. In addition, even routine jobs and clearances require people to speed money at every level – most often, people pay because even petty officials can create inordinate and expensive delays. Add up all that we pay the government as direct or indirect taxes and it takes away well over half our income. Yet, the government has a string of economists (usually living on tax free World Bank pensions) who justify every new tax and come up with arguments to prove that we are not taxed as much as the worst in the world.
Yet, government officials whine endlessly about low salaries and ensure that we do not have a decent administration, public transport, civil amenities or even security!
Most Indians still believe that the judiciary is our last hope – well read on about their spending habits.

Millions spent on flying SC judges abroad
Press Trust of India , Thursday, December 04, 2008, (New Delhi)

The high priests of India’s highest judiciary appear to have a fondness for flying high, suggests a Supreme Court account of foreign jaunts undertaken by its judges.

According to information divulged by the apex court under the Right To Information (RTI) act, present Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan undertook 12 foreign jaunts from 2005 till now, costing the public exchequer a whopping Rs 7.53 million (Rs 75.3 lakh) on airfares alone.

Nine of these trips were taken after he became chief justice in January 2007 and three while he was a Supreme Court judge.

This amount does not take into account other expenses like boarding, the justice department said in its reply to RTI activist Dev Ashish Bhattacharya.

“The department has given me the record of last five financial years only of airfares borne by the government. But they have kept mum about other expenditures incurred by the judges during their visits abroad,” Bhattacharya said, adding that if the accounts were audited then it should not be difficult to provide details of other expenses as well.

The various countries visited by Balakrishnan as part of his “official duty” are the US, Britain, Canada, Hong Kong, France, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, China and the Philippines. He visited Britain four times and Canada twice. His wife accompanied him nine times in the 12 tours, which sometimes clubbed together two or more countries.

The apex court’s detailed account of expenses incurred on the judges’ official tours abroad since 2003 reveals that Balakrishnan’ s foreign jaunts have proved to be the costliest.

The airfares of all the foreign jaunts made by his predecessor Y.K. Sabharwal amounted to Rs.3.65 million (Rs.36 lakh). During his tenure as an apex court judge between January 2000 and October 2005 and later as chief justice of India January 2007, Sabharwal went abroad 10 times.

The chief justice before him, R.C. Lahoti, went abroad six times and the airfares alone cost the exchequer Rs.2.78 million (Rs.27.8 lakh). His wife accompanied him in all his official visits abroad.

Interestingly, not all judges have been so extravagant. For instance, Justice Dalveer Bhandari’s trip to Nepal in March 2006 cost just Rs.11,569.

In an intriguing instance, three judges, including Balakrishnan, gave highly divergent amounts for a single tour to Britain to take part in the seventh Worldwide Common Law Judiciary Conference in London from April 29 to May 3, 2007.

While Balakrishnan was accompanied by his wife and personal secretary, the other two judges, Ashok Bhan and Arijit Pasayat, also took their spouses along.

At the end — Bhan billed the government Rs.670,976, Pasayat Rs.347,656 and Balakrishnan Rs.430,031.

“I had categorically asked the department to tell me whether taking spouses on official tours on government expense was permitted. However, I got no response on this query,” Bhattacharya said.

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