One of the major talking points in the first year of the NDA government has been the extensive foreign travel undertaken by the Prime Minister. While a lot has been written and said about the foreign visits undertaken by the Prime Minister, there is little written about his Cabinet colleagues.
Factly compiled data about the foreign travel undertaken by the members of the Cabinet from May 2014 to March 2015. 27 of Modi’s Cabinet colleagues undertook at least one foreign visit. This is about 42% of the total strength of the Union Cabinet.
Countries Visited
A total of sixty (60) countries were visited by at least one member of the Union Cabinet. All of them together spent 393 days abroad. Apart from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Six(6) of his Cabinet colleagues visited at least five countries.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Minister of State (MoS) for External Affairs Gen. (Dr) V K Singh (Retd), MoS for Petroleum & Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister for Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari, Mos for Environment Prakash Javdekar and MoS for Commerce & Industry Nirmala Sitharaman visited at least five countries.
Purpose of Such Visits
Many of them travelled abroad for bilateral and multilateral summits. They also travelled abroad for the BRICS Summit, G-20 related meetings, the World Economic Forum, SAARC meetings, World Congress and Asia meetings on various issues, etc.
Seven of the ministers undertook foreign travel for private visits.
(Rakesh Dubbudu is the co-founder of Factly, which helps build data literacy. )
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