No information on cost of Modi’s wardrobe, says PMO in reply to RTI query
Clearing air over wardrobe of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his office says it does not have any information on expenses of the PM’s designer dresses and its cost.
Clearing air over wardrobe of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his office says it does not have any information on expenses of the PM’s designer dresses and its cost.
Odisha based law student Rohit Kumar in December 2014 had asked the Prime Minister’s Office about designers engaged for the wardrobe of Prime Minister for his domestic and foreign tours.
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He also asked how much money was paid to designers for his clothes including Mumbai based fashion design Troy Costa for designing Modi’s clothes for his tour of America in 2014. There were news reports that clothes for Modi’s US tour in 2014 was designed by Costa, who had refused to speak on the issue.
“The PMO has clearly stated that the information sought was not a matter of record of this office. Given that, where no records are available the contention that the information sought should be provided is not correct,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a reply to Right To Information application filed by Kumar.
The PMO was also categorical in stating that the expenses on Prime Minister’s clothes were not made from government exchequer and there was no such information on record available with the office.
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“It is your contention that if the expenses on the PM’s wardrobe were met out of government funds, then the information sought may be held as part of official records,” said Krishna Kumar the RTI appellate authority in the PMO in a written response to Kumar on April 4.
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“It is your contention that if the expenses on the PM’s wardrobe were met out of government funds, then the information sought may be held as part of official records,” said Krishna Kumar the RTI appellate authority in the PMO in a written response to Kumar on April 4.
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The PM’s pinstripe suit he had worn when US President Barack Obama had visited India in January was auctioned in Surat fetching Rs 4.31 crore, which was decided to Modi’s Swachh Bharat campaign. The suite had Narendra Modi’s name woven into it in gold pinstripes and it was bought by 62-year-old Laljibhai Patel, a Surat based diamond merchant.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
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