False Claim Viral That 258 Crore Spent on Modi’s Foreign Visits in Last 11 Years

₹258 crore was spent between May 2022 to December 2024 for PM Modi’s foreign travel, as revealed by the GOI.

Social media users have compared the foreign trip expenditures of two prime ministers, PM Narendra Modi and the late Dr Manmohan Singh.

Users noted that ₹258 crore was spent on PM Modi's trips in the last eleven years whereas Dr Singh's expenditure came to ₹642 crore in 10 years.

(Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

Is the claim true?: No, the claim is false.

• The government revealed to the parliament that nearly ₹258 crore was spent on PM Modi's thirty-eight foreign visits between May 2022 and December 2024 and not 'eleven years,' as claimed.

What we found: We check both the figures separately and found the following:

PM Modi's expenses: With a simple Google search, we found several news reports which noted that the central government revealed to the Rajya Sabha on 20 March that the expenditure was nearly ₹258 crore on the thirty-eight foreign visits between May 2022 and December 2024, as reported by The Hindu and the Times of India.

• Similarly, we looked for the data on Digital Sansad and found the question asked by Leader of Opposition and Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge to the external affairs ministry.

• The question noted: "The total expenditure incurred by Indian embassies on arrangements for the Prime Minister’s foreign visits in the past three years, year-wise and country-wise."

• The question only inquired for the data of the last three years.

PM Singh's expenses: We came across news reports from 2013 indicating that, according to a Right to Information reply from the Prime Minister's office (PMO), ₹642 crore has been spent on the air travel of sixty-seven trips since 2004, when he became PM, with bills for five of them still pending.

• The invoices obtained from the remaining sixty two visits indicated that an amount of ₹642 crore was spent.

• Similarly, the PMO uploaded a detailed list of the amount spent on the chartered flights for the seventy three trips of PM Singh between May 2004 to May 2014.

• We calculated the total sum which came to ₹795 crore.

Conclusion: Social media users have falsely claimed that PM Modi's foreign tours have costed ₹258 crore in the last eleven years.

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