Congress questions Modi’s use of chartered flights as Gujarat CM after BJP targets Robert Vadra
Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the trips had cost Rs 16.56 crore, according to an RTI query in 2007, and questioned who funded them.
The Congress on Wednesday asked who paid for the private chartered flights that Narendra Modi used to travel across India and abroad as the chief minister of Gujarat between 2003 and 2007, IANS reported. Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi claimed that Modi’s 100 such trips – four of them abroad – had cost an estimated Rs 16.56 crore.
Singhvi was responding to allegations that a fugitive arms dealer had funded international flight tickets for Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra in 2012.
He said the claim was based on reply to a Right to Information query by a Gujarat Congress leader in 2007. “These trips are clearly trips by a Constitutional functionary,” The Indian Express quoted him as saying. “They are provided for by private persons, and we do not have any account of them, so far.”
Singhvi stressed that the allegations against Vadra were based on selectively leaked emails and do not prove anything. On Tuesday, the Congress had said that the government should get “any investigation” done into allegations against Vadra.