Uttar Pradesh Transport Minister Durga Prasad Yadav has embarked on a week-long study tour to Brazil with family.
The minister left for the tour for studying the transport system with focus on infrastructure and IT. He had gone on Saturday with his son, daughter-in-law, private secretary and some officials and the wife of one of the officials, a transport department official said.
The tour sponsored by the Association of State Road Transport Undertakings (ASRTU), a body with country's all state road transport corporations as its members, was originally meant for just three persons (from UP State Road Transport Corporation) but somehow the number was raised and VIPs were included on the list, he said.
"The delegation would also be attending a transport exhibition-cum-conference in Rio de Janeiro and visit Sao Paulo," he said. The official said he was not aware if the minister was bearing the expenditure of his family or not.
Earlier this year, a 17-member delegation including eight ministers in Akhilesh Yadav Cabinet, had gone on 20-day-long tour of the UK, Turkey, Netherlands, Greece and the UAE to study Parliamentary techniques drawing severe criticism from opposition parties for sponsoring the tour instead of utilising the same amount for relief and rehabilitation of the Muzaffarnagar riot victims.
"As the ASRTU had forwarded only three slots from the state and we had forwarded three names - UPSRTC Managing Director Mukesh Kumar Meshram, Deputy General Manager (technical) Mohd Rehman and Manager (operations) S K Banerjee and we do not know how so many people became part of the tour" the official said.
The minister's Private Secretary Mohd Salim, Principal Secretary (Transport) Arvind Kumar Deo Singh, UPSRTC Managing Director, Mukesh Kumar Meshram, Special Secretary to Chief Minister, Naveen Kumar, and two other UPSRTC officials are part of the tour. One of the senior officials has also taken his wife with him.
