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| 'Austere' FM may skip NY event |
| Saubhadra Chatterji / New Delhi Sep 13, 2009, 00:11 IST |
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Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s austerity call may have ruffled many feathers, but one key Cabinet minister has taken it to heart. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who travelled from Delhi to Kolkata today in low-cost carrier SpiceJet, is likely to opt out a trip to the US later this month.
Mukherjee has been invited to delver the keynote address at an investors’ conference in New York organised by some industry associations. But Mukherjee may not go as he finds the meeting “not an absolute necessity” for attendance. The minister indicated that another reason he may skip the New York meeting is that he has two important meetings coming up and is therefore unwilling to “waste” two days.
Mukherjee will attend two back-to-back meetings in Cyprus and Turkey on key international issues. The ministers from Commonwealth countries will meet at Limassol in Cyprus between September 30 and October 2 to discuss their experience in fighting the global economic crisis. Soon after this meet, the annual and spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are scheduled in Istanbul. “I might take my official aircraft and go to Istanbul directly from Cyprus,” Mukherjee said.
Mukherjee has booked himself an economy-class ticket on Air India for his return from Kolkata to Delhi. However, his ailing wife will travel business class. Mukherjee is learnt to have paid personally for her ticket. But there is a chance that Mukherjee might be upgraded to business class by the national carrier.
Gandhi and Prime Minister Singh had called for austerity given the drought-like situation in the country. This has caused some heartburn in the council of ministers. Two days ago, in a stormy cabinet meeting, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma wanted the ban on luxury air travel to be lifted and said he needs a ‘flat bed’ (a facility available only to business class passengers) to “look fresh” as meetings are generally scheduled within hours of landing at the foreign destination.
Congress party sources pointed out that Defence Minister AK Antony has always travelled economy class. Before he became defence minister, Antony availed a special aircraft only once in his life when he had to rush to Thiruvananthapuram to take charge as the chief minister of Kerala replacing K Karunakaran. Another former Kerala chief minister, Oommen Chandy, also developed a habit of taking only late night flights to Delhi as their tickets are the cheapest.
But Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee beats everyone else in leading an austere life. Known for wearing handloom sarees and rubber slippers on all occasions, Banerjee has not taken any official car and travels in the Maruti Suzuki Zen of her long-time aide, Ratan Mukherjee. In her earlier stint as railway minister in the National Democratic Alliance, she travelled only by train. These days, as she shuttles frequently between Delhi and West Bengal, Banerjee takes an economy seat in the flights.
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