It’s common knowledge now that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a workaholic and isn’t known to have taken any time off. But what was a murmur is now official – India’s Prime Minister hasn’t taken a single day off since coming to power in 2014.
A Right to Information (RTI) filed by one Prafful P Sarda asked two questions, the first being how many days PM Modi had attended office since becoming the PM. “The Prime Minister is on duty all the time. No leave has been availed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi since taking office,” the RTI reply, a copy of which was accessed by News18, said.
The second question sought “the details about number of days present and attended various events and functions by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji after becoming PM of India till date (sic)”. A website link to the PMO has been provided in the reply, which shows the accumulated number of events surpasses 3,000, almost an event a day.
The RTI reply was provided by PMO Under Secretary Parvesh Kumar, who is also the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) of the concerned ministry that deals with RTI queries.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had recently shed light on how the PM functions. During an interaction with the Indian community in Bangkok, Jaishankar said: “I feel it’s been an enormous good fortune of the country to have someone like PM Modi at this time. And I am not saying this because he is the prime minister of the day and I am a member of his cabinet.”
Last year, Maharashtra BJP chief Chandrakant Patil had claimed that PM Modi sleeps for only two hours a day.
A similar RTI query in 2016 had elicited the same response. Back then, an RTI applicant had sought a copy of leave rules and procedures for the Prime Minister of the country from it and the Cabinet Secretariat. “The Prime Minister can be said to be on duty all the time,” the Right to Information (RTI) response from the PMO had said.
The applicant had also wanted to know if former prime ministers Manmohan Singh, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, HD Deve Gowda, IK Gujral, PV Narasimha Rao, Chandrashekhar, VP Singh and Rajiv Gandhi had availed any leave and were there any records. “Information regarding leave record of previous Prime Ministers is not a part of records held by this office… However, it may be noted that no leave has been availed by present Prime Minister i.e Shri Narendra Modi since taking over charge,” the RTI response had said in October 2016.
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