SAD questions Mann for hiring Rs 400 cr luxury plane to ferry Kejriwal from Delhi to Punjab

Chandigarh, Dec 19 (IANS) The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) General Secretary Parambans Singh Romana on Tuesday asked Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann to explain why his government had hired a Rs 400 crore luxury plane at the cost of Rs 10 lakh per hour to ferry Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal from Delhi.

He demanded that the entire expenditure borne by the state government in chartering planes for Kejriwal’s travels to Punjab as well as party election campaigns in other states, be recovered from the AAP.

Addressing the media here, Romana said the Punjab Government not only hired a Rs 400 crore Dassault Falcon 2000 LX plane at the rate of Rs 10 lakh per hour to facilitate Kejriwal’s journey from Delhi to Bathinda on December 17, but the chief minister himself made a detour to Bathinda while travelling from Chandigarh on the state helicopter to ferry Kejriwal to Maur, the site of an AAP rally.

He said it was condemnable that Kejriwal, who professed to represent the common man, could not travel even 30 km by road and waited for Mann to complete this journey by helicopter.

Lauding social activist Manik Goyal for exposing the loot of the state treasury by the AAP, Romana said Goyal had exposed the manner in which the privilege enjoyed by the chief minister to hire aircraft was being misused, by tracing the flight paths of both Kejriwal’s plane as well as the state government’s helicopter on the Flightradar app.

Asserting that wasteful expenditures like these were bankrupting Punjab, Romana said while more than Rs 1,000 crore has been spent on advertisements by the AAP Government in one year alone, it had spent crores solely on the flight expenses of Kejriwal which should have either been borne by the Delhi Government or the AAP.

“Bhagwant Mann owes an explanation to Punjabis as to why he is spending money from the state exchequer to bankroll Kejriwal’s travel plans,” he said.

The SAD leader said Kejriwal had made more than a dozen trips to Punjab even as the chartered plane hired by the Punjab Government had taken Kejriwal for election campaigning in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan had made repeated trips to the three states during the recent elections there.