Kolkata, September 13: The austerity fever has started catching up, with a host of Union Ministers vowing on Saturday to cut expenses on travel and other aspects related to their work, following the example set by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
Mukherjee, who is in the midst of a controversy over austerity measures imposed by his ministry, flew to Kolkata on Saturday morning by economy class of a budget airline.
His office said he would return on Sunday by economy class on an Air India flight.
Jumping on the bandwagon of the austerity drive were a number of other ministers, including Vilasrao Deshmukh, Veerappa Moily, Anand Sharma, Sushilkumar Shinde, Praful Patel, Mamata Banerjee, Krishna Tirath, Jairam Ramesh and Dinesh Trivedi, who vowed to cut expenses on travel and other aspects related to their work.
Mukherjee might also cancel a visit to Cyprus for a Commonwealth Ministers’ meeting to which he had planned to go by a special aircraft, sources close to him said.
They said he would fly ordinary class if he flies abroad for a World Bank meeting in Turkey sometime later.
“It’s nothing new to me. During elections and whenever I travel on commercial flights, I almost (always) travelled economy class. It’s nothing new,” Mukherjee told reporters in Kolkata.
–Agencies