33 flights, ₹8.9 crore bill: RTI reveals railway ministers’ chartered air travel over nearly two decades

For nearly two decades, railway ministers have had access to a mode of travel rarely available to government officials: chartered aircraft for emergencies, inspections and other official engagements. An RTI response obtained by India Today shows that the Railways spent nearly ₹8.90 crore on such air travel since 2007, covering 33 occasions and 48 days involving 11 railway ministers and ministers of state.

The records show a sharp difference in both the frequency of use and the cost of these flights. Lalu Prasad Yadav used chartered aircraft the most, with 12 occasions on record. Suresh Prabhu, however, emerged as the biggest spender, with four trips costing ₹3.01 crore.

The documents also reveal how the nature of these journeys and the way they were recorded changed over the years, with detailed entries from the earlier period becoming increasingly broad in description in more recent records.

Lalu used chartered aircraft the most, but Prabhu had the highest bill

Lalu Prasad Yadav used chartered aircraft on 12 occasions, the highest among the railway ministers covered by the RTI records. His trips account for more than a third of the 33 occasions recorded since 2007.

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But Lalu was not the biggest spender.

That distinction goes to Suresh Prabhu, who used chartered facilities on four occasions covering 13 days. The total bill for his trips stood at ₹3.01 crore, the highest among the ministers in the records.

Prabhu's average expenditure worked out to roughly ₹75 lakh per occasion, also the highest average spending among the ministers.

His total spending was about ₹1.03 crore more than Lalu's, despite using the facility only four times compared with Lalu's 12 occasions.

At the other end of the spectrum is current Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. Despite holding the post since 2021, Vaishnaw has used a chartered aircraft only once, according to the records. His only flight was to Bhubaneswar following the 2023 Balasore train crash and cost ₹25 lakh.

Railways spent nearly ₹8.90 crore on 33 occasions

In total, the Ministry of Railways spent nearly ₹8.90 crore on chartered air travel involving 11 railway ministers and ministers of state since 2007.

The spending covered 33 occasions and 48 days.

The reasons for the flights followed a fairly familiar pattern: train accidents, floods, inaugurations, foundation-laying ceremonies and other official programmes.

KH Muniyappa flew to Kanpur in 2011 after the Howrah-Kalka Mail accident. R Velu travelled to Jajpur-Keonjhar Road in 2009 after the Coromandel Express derailment. Manoj Sinha flew to Kanpur in 2016 after another train accident.

Vaishnaw's only recorded chartered flight came in 2023, when he travelled to Bhubaneswar to visit the site of the Balasore train crash.

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Lalu's three flood-related flights cost close to ₹30 lakh

The 2008 Bihar floods account for several of Lalu Prasad Yadav's chartered flights.

That year, the Kosi river breached its embankment near the India-Nepal border and changed course, flooding large parts of north Bihar and triggering one of the worst floods the state had seen in decades.

The RTI records show that Lalu flew from Patna to Jogbani and back on June 4, 2008, for an "aerial survey of flood-affected areas in Bihar".

On August 24, 2008, he flew from Patna to Supaul, Araria and Madhepura before returning to Patna, again for an "aerial survey of the flood-affected areas".

On September 5, he travelled from Patna to Nepal and back specifically to inspect the site of the Kosi breach.

Together, these three flood-related flights cost close to ₹30 lakh.

The remaining flights recorded against Lalu were linked to flag-off ceremonies, station inaugurations and foundation-laying events. One entry also describes a trip to meet the families of people injured or killed in extremist violence in Assam's Tinsukia district.

Details in the records become thinner over time

The RTI documents show a noticeable difference in the level of detail provided for flights during different periods.

Lalu's journeys are logged with considerable specificity. Some entries mention the exact station, river or train number associated with the visit, while others provide detailed reasons for the minister's travel.

That level of detail becomes much less common as the records move into the 2010s and 2020s.

During the tenures of Suresh Prabhu and Piyush Goyal, several entries simply describe the purpose of travel as "official" or "various official programmes".

Prabhu's costliest trip was a multi-city journey covering Delhi-Imphal-Agartala-Dimapur-Delhi. The flight cost over ₹62 lakh, but the record provides no further detail beyond its official purpose.

In the later records, the flights that consistently carry a specific reason are those linked to major train accidents. Other journeys are frequently described only as official travel.

Chartered travel shifted from IAF aircraft to IRCTC bookings

The records also point to a change in the aircraft used for these journeys.

During the 2000s and early 2010s, almost every chartered flight was an Indian Air Force aircraft. One BSF flight is also recorded.

From 2018, during Piyush Goyal's tenure as railway minister, that pattern changed.

Nearly every subsequent flight was chartered through IRCTC, the ticketing arm of Indian Railways.

Goyal's tenure accounts for eight IRCTC-booked trips between 2018 and 2020. One of these was a Delhi-Chennai-Mumbai-Delhi journey that cost nearly ₹39 lakh.

The RTI records thus offer a glimpse into how railway ministers have used publicly funded chartered aircraft over the past 16 years—from emergency visits and inspections to inaugurations and other official programmes. They also show a clear change in the documentation, with detailed descriptions in the earlier records giving way to increasingly broad labels such as "official" in later years.