MUMBAI: A day after a flight to the US was delayed as his principal secretary Praveen Pardeshi forgot visa documents at home, eyebrows have been raised over chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’ jumbo delegation.

Accompanied by a seven-member delegation, Fadnavis is on an official visit to the US for five days to urge NRIs to return to India, particularly Maharashtra and invest in industrial development. The CM is accompanied by industries minister Subhash Desai, chief secretary Swadheen Kshatriya, CM’s principal secretary Pardeshi, industries secretary Apoorva Chandra, development commissioner (industries) Suresh Bagde and MIDC chief executive officer Bhushan Gagrani.

A senior bureaucrat said it was wrong to take a jumbo delegation to the US for securing foreign direct investment or luring NRIs settled there. At a juncture when the state is passing through the worst-ever resource crunch and the debt burden has crossed Rs 3.33 lakh crore, the expenditure on foreign visits should be minimum.

He further said that the chief secretary should have himself opted out of the tour. In addition, Kshatriya should have asked the industries department to depute only one bureaucrat from that department. In the CM’s delegation, there are three bureaucrats from the industries department—industries secretary Apoorva Chandra, development commissioner Suresh Bagde and MIDC executive officer Bhushan Gagrani. “Only one of them was sufficient,” the bureaucrat said.

Secondly, the bureaucrat said that after Fadnavis returns to Mumbai, his office should come out with a white paper on the status of foreign investment during the last 10 years following visit of CMs.

“All predecessors of Fadnavis also visited foreign countries, they too were accompanied by jumbo delegations. However, there is no information on record on the outcome of their visits abroad. Let people of Maharashtra know about foreign investments during the tenure of previous chief ministers,” he said.

