Tracking the Modi trips: Public money used for BJP promotion

• At an official event to mark the Viksit Bharat, Viksit Bihar programme in Bihar’s Bettiah, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 6 this year said the district reminded one of the life of “Sita Mata and Luv Kush, but the INDI alliance was even against the Pran Prathishtha of Shri Ram”. 

• The prime minister, in a 36-minute speech in Jharkhand’s Jamshedpur on September 15, called the JMM, RJD and Congress as enemies of Jharkhand, and said the state’s dream is the same as the BJP’s.

• The PM carried out a BJP roadshow in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh on October 2, claiming in a 45-minute political speech that the JMM and “their masters in the Congress” want to make tribals a minority. 

What do the above have in common?

They were all probably funded by you. Yes, you read that right. 

The political opposition has often accused Indian prime ministers of using public money for a party’s political machinery. This report will not hark back to Indira Gandhi’s disqualification over the use of state apparatus for electoral purposes, but only three specific findings of our own from the Modi years, based on an analysis of data on the prime minister’s office website and the PM’s social media handles.

One, that PM Modi’s official trips, paid for by public money, have often included non-official events. Though the PM’s office, in response to an RTI query, said that the party pays for non-official events, it did not respond to Newslaundry’s queries as to how the travel expenses are accounted for in such overlap cases.

Two, that PM Modi’s official trips have also included official events with political remarks reasserting his electoral branding and lashing out at the opposition. 

Three, there is a high incidence of PM Modi’s official trips to states within a 100-day window preceding a poll announcement there.