Three IAS officials approve each other’s Paris trip, spend lakhs of taxpayer money

Three IAS officers, in 2015, went on an official Paris trip, approved by each other, for seven days and spent more than ₹25 lakh, out of which ₹18 lakh were reimbursed, revealed a Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report.

Three IAS officials from Haryana, Vijay Dev, who was the advisor to Chandigarh administration; Anurag Agrawal, who was the Chandigarh home secretary; and the-then secretary Vikram Dev Dutt went on the trip, when former governor of Punjab, Kaptan Singh Solanki was in-charge of the office at that time.

In 2015, the Chandigarh administration received an invitation from the Le Corbusier Foundation in Paris for a meeting to mark the 50th birth anniversary of the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, who planned the Chandigarh city. The administration had named four officials for the event.

The CAG report revealed that the invitation was mainly for an officer and an architect. However, three of them left for the trip, that too at the taxpayer's expense.

The investigation revealed that officials allowed each other's travel. Dev's tour was approved by Dutt, Dutt's tour by Dev and Dev's tour by Agarwal.

All expenses for the trip were paid by the Chandigarh administration. The officials also ignored the rule that no foreign travel for more than five days is allowed without the approval of the screening committee, as their trip lasted for seven days.

Today, Vijay Dev is a retired election officer of Delhi. Vikram Dev Dutt is the director of Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), and Anurag Aggarwal is the chief electoral officer of Haryana.