‘Who spent huge amounts on chartered flights’: J-K MLA sparks heated debate on govt spending

Speaking on the grants of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah in the Assembly, Shabir Ahmad Kullay, an MLA from Shopian, said that the government had spent Rs 35 crore on guests in J&K in the last three years. This allegedly includes the money spent on guests during the G20 event hosted in the UT.

“Who has spent such a huge amount on chartered flights? Who used chartered flights? Is this not bureaucratic corruption? We need to probe how such state exchequer funds were spent,” Kullay said.

Although his comments found support from the members of the Treasury Benches, the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party said that while some of this spending was for G20 guests, the others were meant to “promote tourism”.

“The chief minister has full authority as it is his department. Please do not address the galleries. Let us have a probe into the spending of funding since 2009, when it was your government,” BJP MLA Balwant Mankotia said, triggering protests from the treasury benches.

Speaking in the House, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah expressed unhappiness over the UT administration’s expenses on chartered flights in the last three years.

Pointing out that these chartered flights were booked when the UT’s own plane was lying grounded at Jammu airport for the last five years, the CM said: “Pilots are available on hire. If you do not want them for the full term, they are available for a month as well. Last month, during the visit of the Vice-President (Jagdeep Dhankhar), when our own helicopter pilot was on leave, we arranged a temporary pilot who flew our plane”.

Referring to ruckus in the House over the issue in the morning, he said: “We’re not pointing fingers at anybody. If you want to know how the funds were used, it is okay and if you don’t want to, I have no objection’’.

“We had purchased the plane out of J&K’s public exchequer, but we kept it grounded in the open at the Jammu airport for five years. All of you must have seen it there while boarding the flight or returning from there,” he said. “Carelessness…I apologise for saying this but it is total carelessness.”

Even today, the government does not know as to how many crores will have to be spent to make it airworthy again, he said.

“This is not the right use of public money. Let us accept that there has been some mistake somewhere which we will have to rectify now,” he said.