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NEW DELHI: Pakistan has billed India Rs 2.86 lakh as route navigationcharges for Indian Air Force aircraft used by Prime Minister Narendra Modiduring a stopover in Lahore and visits to Russia, Afghanistan, Iran andQatar, *Times of India* reportedlink>onSunday.
It said the data gathered by activist Commodore (Retd) Lokesh Batra throughhis RTI application, show that till June 2016, Indian Air Force aircraftwere used for the Prime Minister’s visits to 11 countries—Nepal, Bhutan,Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Qatar, Australia, Pakistan, Russia, Iran, Fiji andSingapore.
Batra gave a copy of the RTI responses, received from August last year toJanuary 30, 2018, to Indian news agency Press Trust of India (PTI). It iscrucial to mention that during one such visit on December 25, 2015, Modihad a brief stopover in Lahore at the request of then Pakistan primeminister Nawaz Sharif. The stopover took place when Modi was returning fromRussia and Afghanistan.
For this, a bill of Rs 1.49 lakh has been issued as route navigationcharges, records accessed under the RTI Act from the Indian High Commissionin Pakistan show. Modi was received by Nawaz with a warm hug at the tarmacof Lahore’s Allama Iqbal International Airport when he made the unexpectedstopover on his way back home following a day-long trip to Afghanistanafter concluding a two-day visit to Russia.
Modi was accorded a red carpet welcome as the PM’s special Indian Air ForceBoeing 737 plane touched down at 4.50 pm. He then took a helicopterto Nawaz’s Raiwind residence on the outskirts of Lahore to attend Sharif’sbirthday celebrations.
The Indian paper, quoting the RTI response, reported that a bill of Rs77,215 was imposed as route navigation charges by Pakistani authoritieswhen Modi used an IAF aircraft to visit Iran on May 22-23, 2016, and Rs59,215 when he visited Qatar on June 4-6, 2016.
For both visits, he flew over Pakistan. The records were part of a responsecollected from various missions of India on the expenditure incurred on thevisits of Modi on IAF aircraft between 2014 and 2016. According to the datacollected, a total of about Rs 2 crore has been spent on foreign visits ofthe Prime Minister during the period for the use of IAF aircraft.