Premier Class: A Sneak Peek at Narendra Modi’s International Travel Bill

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will soon be packing his bags for another overseas trip, this time to New York and California’s Silicon Valley. It is to be his 16th foray abroad during his 16 months in office.

A 69-year-old retired Indian navy officer got to wondering about the price tag for all that globetrotting. Invoking India’s Right to Information Act, Lokesh Batra says he asked Indian diplomatic missions around the world for details on how much Mr. Modi’s trips cost. Mr. Batra shared the 80 pages of responses he says he received with The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Batra is something of an RTI activist. He has filed more than 100 requests for government disclosures on everything from erratic water supply in Delhi to the number of cases stuck in India’s top court. He says he wanted to look into Mr. Modi’s travel expenses “to ensure that public authorities remain committed to transparency” rather than because of any suspicion money was misspent.

Many embassies and consulates, including those in South Korea, France, Sri Lanka and Japan said they couldn’t give him the information he sought, saying it was “not readily available.” Officials at India’s embassy in Washington also didn’t give him any details.

Still, he found out some interesting things about spending on Mr. Modi’s entourage for travel in 14 countries. The total spending on the parts of the trips for which the embassies disclosed information was more than 450 million rupees, or about $7 million.

It’s hard to gauge if that is appropriate as it only represents a slice of the overall spending but global trips by heads of state can be expensive. The United States stopped disclosing the president’s travel budgets years ago, citing security reasons. Back in 1998, President Bill Clinton’s four-day trip to Chile cost $10.5 million according to the U.S. Government of Accountability Office.

According to the responses received by Mr. Batra, Mr. Modi and the people accompanying him spent around $1.8 million in Australia and about $1.1 million each during his visits to Canada and New York.

The types of details Mr. Batra was given varied from city to city but the breakdown for expenses in New York trip were quite detailed.

During the four days he spent in New York, close to $600,000 was spent on hotel rooms for Mr. Modi and his entourage of at least 40 people, about $300,000 was spent on car rentals and about $43,000 on hiring office equipment. Other expenditures included a total bill of around $38,000 for daily spending money for members of his team and almost $16,000 to have an ambulance standing by.

Among the smaller but interesting expenses was $1,000 for interpreters, $615 for tips and even a single entry of $4 for a copy of The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Batra is hoping to get more responses eventually. His RTI to Mr. Modi’s office last month, asking for details about the money spent on flights for the prime minister’s trips is still pending.

A spokesman for India’s foreign ministry confirmed that Mr. Batra had been given documents following his request but said he could not confirm their contents as each was sent separately from different missions. He added that the “numbers are out in the public domain and no one has disputed them.”

Consulate officials in New York and Melbourne confirmed that they had responded to Mr. Batra’s requests. Indian officials in Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Canberra, Sydney and the United Nations mission in New York did not immediately respond to requests for confirmation.