PM Modi has spent every fourth day outside Delhi on official & non-official trips

Prime Minister Narendra Modi | PTI

Narendra Modi has spent over a year on domestic trips, of which ‘non-official’ visits, i.e. campaigning and BJP meetings, took up 131 days.

New Delhi: In almost five years as Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has spent an average of one month every year campaigning for the Bharatiya Janata Party outside the capital.

According to data available on the Prime Minister of India’s website, Modi has been out of the national capital on domestic visits — official and non-official — every fifth day. And if his foreign tours are included, Modi has spent every fourth day outside New Delhi.

So, is Modi the most travelled Prime Minister in India’s history? It can be argued, but there is no data available for the domestic visits of his predecessors.

Breaking down the numbers

Out of roughly 1,700 days in office, Modi made 322 domestic trips, spanning over 370 days. His foreign visits totalled 184 days.

His domestic trips included “non-official visits” — denoting his political tours for election campaigns or party meetings — which amounted to 131 days, according to the website.

Modi’s political adversaries have often accused him of spending a lot of his time on campaigning and on foreign visits. After he completed four years as PM last year, Mumbai Congress unit chief Sanjay Nirupam tweeted that Modi had spent 800 days on public rallies and 150 days on foreign visits. Nirupam’s claim on public rallies was way off the mark, but the calculation of foreign visits was pretty close.

The Prime Minister has visited every state and union territory of India since he took over in May 2014. He has visited Uttar Pradesh the most — 61 times — followed by his home state Gujarat (36), Maharashtra (24), Bihar (22), Madhya Pradesh (19), Karnataka (17), Jammu and Kashmir (16), Haryana and Jharkhand (15 each), Odisha (13), Kerala (10) and West Bengal (7).

There is a pattern to the Prime Minister’s domestic visits — their frequency goes up significantly in poll-bound states. Of the 61 visits that Modi made to UP since 2014, 27 were between November 2016 to March 2017, just ahead of the state assembly polls in February-March 2017.

Bihar and Rajasthan also follow the same pattern. Of his 22 visits to Bihar, 17 were between July 2015 and the first week of November — the state assembly elections were held in October-November 2015. Modi’s 14 trips to Rajasthan included 10 in 2018 — the state went to the polls on 7 December.

Analysts’ take

Political commentator Suhas Palshikar called the constant travelling an example of “Modi’s penchant for publicity”.

“He is so keen to be on the public mind all the time. I am not saying that the PM should not travel. In a continental country like India, in spite of many newer modes of remaining connected with the public, like the Mann Ki Baat radio programme that Modi himself started, a PM needs to travel locally. But there has to be a sense of proportion,” Palshikar, who taught political science at the Savitribai Phule Pune University, said.

“The constant travelling could be because of the fact that Modi wants to be seen as a PM who is always on the move, who is present everywhere.”

Another reason, said Palshikar, was the fact Modi is an assured vote-winner for the BJP. “Despite having other senior leaders, the BJP knows that finally in order to get votes, they need Modi,” he said.

Gilles Verniers, assistant professor of political science and co-director of the Trivedi Centre for Political Data at Ashoka University, added that the frequency of Modi’s domestic visits is in keeping with his and the BJP’s strategy to saturate the public sphere with his images.

“The idea is to create the impression of omnipresence and effectiveness, and at the same time, also make the opposition invisible and inaudible,” Verniers said.

Verniers said one could make the argument that it is good to have a PM who connects with states and local areas.

“But there is the other side too—that every intervention the PM makes has electoral connotations. So, everything is turned into an opportunity regardless of how small the event is, like laying the foundation stone for a bypass project,” he said.