It is always a matter of interest for ordinary people to know what the life of a Prime Minister or a President would be like.
Mansoor Darvesh, in an attempt to satiate his curiosity, filed an RTI query to get the information regarding the upkeep of the President’s house. However, all he received was some boring details about the amount spent on the maintenance of Rashtrapati Bhawan and telephone bills aside from ‘allowances’ for the President.
Nevertheless, the data that came up surprised Darvesh. While, his ‘allowances’ range from Rs. 30.96 crore to Rs. 41.96 crore, what shocked Darvesh furthermore was the fact that the staff consists of 754 people working on a total of Rs. 1.52 crore salary and an average telephone bill of Rs. 5.06 lakh per month. He calculated that over 100 crore is spent on the President while there is an entire nation to feed and breed. On the contrary, APJ Abdul Kalam’s first question on appointment as the president was, “Now that I have become the President of India, the government is going to look after me till I am living; so what can I do with my savings and salary?”
