No details of Sonia Gandhi's foreign tour under RTI

The UPA government seems to be reluctant to reveal information on foreign tours of Sonia Gandhi under the RTI. An RTI applicant, Kailash Kanwar from of Bhilwara in Rajasthan, had moved application to get details about Gandhi’s foreign visits of the past two years including her recent trip to the US for surgery.

The UPA government seems to be reluctant to reveal information on foreign tours of Sonia Gandhi under the RTI. An RTI applicant, Kailash Kanwar from of Bhilwara in Rajasthan, had moved application to get details about Gandhi’s foreign visits of the past two years including her recent trip to the US for surgery.

But the application made rounds in different ministries without yielding any information. According to the RTI activist, his application was first sent to the external affairs ministry. The ministry redirected the application to the parliamentary affairs and thereafter to the ministry of statistics and programme implementation.

While transferring the file to the parliamentary affairs, the MEA said, “The ministry of parliamentary affairs is the concerned department to provide information on foreign visits undertaken by Sonia Gandhi as an MP.”

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The parliamentary affairs ministry shifted the file to the statistics and programme implementation ministry pointing out that as Gandhi is the chairperson of National Advisory Council, the ministry of statistics and programme implementation is the concerned authority. The statistics ministry sent the file to National Advisory Council with remarks that it is “not involved in any matter related to tour or trips taken by Smt Sonia Gandhi...”