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Five star
ministers check out after media reports their residential address
WSN Network
 New
Delhi: Even as India's ruling Congress party preached austerity and
has asked its MPs to pay 20 per cent of their salary as drought
relief, two Central ministers chose to work out of top class suites
of top class five star hotels in
New Delhi
ever since the government was formed. Within hours of a major
English daily front paging their residential address for the last
over three months, the two sheepishly checked out and claimed they
were paying for their own stay and were not taxing the tax payer.
Clearly, neither
realised the larger issues involved. How accessible a minister
remains to the common man, party workers and concerned public
activists when he resides in a five star hotel in presidential
suites?
Also, if they
were paying from their own pockets, what does that say about the
nature of politics where ministers are ready to pay lakhs for their
stay from their own kitty? What great benefits has such expenditure
been bringing them?
 And
they were so deeply interested in public service even at their own
expense, why did they check out of the hotel on the very afternoon
following the newspaper's publication of the story?
For over three
months now, External Affairs Minister S M Krishna was at ITC’s
Maurya on Sardar Patel Marg and his junior Shashi Tharoor at Hotel
Taj Mahal on Man Singh Road in Delhi.
According to
their poll affidavits, Krishna has assets worth Rs 18 crore and
Tharoor Rs 15 crore. The ostensible reason for their five-star stay
is that their “official accommodation” is not ready.
Krishna was
allotted a residence in which a previous External Affairs Minister
lived but that was not to his liking and he wanted it renovated.
Now, he has got himself a bungalow allotted on Thyagaraja Marg which
again is under renovation.
With the
government claiming to make major strides in the first 100 days, the
failure to renovate a house seems jarring, but perhaps not to the
ministers.
Tharoor’s
explanation was pathetically drafted: “(D)iscussion on austerity
occurred well after I had already checked in ...My stay costs the
taxpayer nothing since I am paying the bills from my own savings
after a lifetime of international work.”
9
September 2009
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