Maharashtra: Power firms paid ₹42 lakh for Congress minister’s trips, alleges BJP

Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) media cell chief Vishwas Pathak has alleged that energy minister and Congress leader Nitin Raut used chartered flights for several trips between Mumbai, Nagpur, Hyderabad and Delhi, for which debt-ridden power companies were made to pay more than ₹42 lakh, during the lockdown

Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) media cell chief Vishwas Pathak has alleged that energy minister and Congress leader Nitin Raut used chartered flights for several trips between Mumbai, Nagpur, Hyderabad and Delhi, for which debt-ridden power companies were made to pay more than ₹42 lakh, during the lockdown. Raut has said he would react to the allegations after going through the same.

Nitin Raut. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT Photo)

“As per the details obtained under RTI (Right to Information), MSEB Holding Company Limited paid ₹14.45 lakh for two trips and Maharashtra State Power Generation Company paid ₹29.10 lakh for three trips between Mumbai, Delhi, Aurangabad and Hyderabad. Two other companies have paid more than ₹60 lakh for several such trips between June and October, but they have been hiding the information under RTI. This means the minister has spent more than ₹1 crore of the public money on his air travel by making the bleeding companies pay for it,” Pathak said.

Pathak said that the payment made by the companies is illegal. “No statutory corporations or the boards affiliated to the state government are allowed to bear such expenses on behalf of the minister who heads these bodies. Secondly, every private flight journey by the minister should have approval from the chief minister. In these cases, no such approval was taken by the minister. Most of these trips appear to be private ones and there was no reason to make the companies to foot the bills,” he alleged.