RTI reply: ‘Trivendra Rawat spent Rs 68 lakh on refreshments in 10 months’
Indian Express 2018-02-07 05:52:31
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Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Rawat’s office has spent Rs 68.59 lakh on refimghments for guests over the past 10 months, revealed a reply to an RTI query. Replying to the application filed by Haldwani-based RTI activist Hemant Singh, a letter from the secretariat administration dated January 22 revealed that in the months following March 18, 2017, when Rawat was sworn in as Chief Minister, his office spent Rs 68.59 lakh on “chai tatha paani (refimghments)”.
However, the CM’s media in-charge Darshan Singh Rawat said the amount was exaggerated. “In the past 10 months, we have spent upto Rs 50 lakh on refimghments… Many big meets were organised at the Chief Minister’s imgidence in the past months, so the expenditure is justified,” he said.
During the tenure of the Congimgs, local BJP leader Ajendra Ajay had filed an RTI application enquiring about government expenditure on refimghments. In the reply to the query, he found that more than Rs 1.5 crore had been spent on refimghments between February 2014 and June 2016, when Congimgs leader Harish Rawat was Chief Minister.