It’s a small cabinet but with a healthy appetite and a penchant for entertaining guests quite liberally. A query under RTI has revealed that Puducherry chief minister V Vaithilingam and his five colleagues in the cabinet have spent more than Rs 36 lakh on tea, snacks and beverages while hosting visitors in their respective offices in the assembly in the eight months between September 2008 and April 2009. Welfare minister M Kandasamy topped the list among the spenders by ordering tea, snacks, beverages and other food items for Rs 10.48 lakh between September 2008 and March 2009 for visitors, officials and elected members. Kandasamy was closely followed by the chief minister, whose office spent Rs 9.86 lakh from September 25, 2008 to April 30, 2009.

Some days the reception seemed to have been on a mass scale: Vaithilingam’s office ordered food items for Rs 1.06 lakh from a local hotel on a single day in September 2008; similarly, home minister E Valsaraj’s office bought sweets worth Rs 60,000 on December 5, 2008. Public health minister A Namassivayam’s office spaced out the expenses over three months, but ended up with a bill of Rs 2.4 lakh on purchase of sweets from the same retailer. All of them show a marked preference for certain hotels and restaurants. Kandasamy’s office, for instance, divided orders worth Rs 5 lakh between two establishments. The total expenses incurred by the cabinet added up to Rs 36.84 lakh.

The RTI query was filed by NGO Rajiv Gandhi Human Rights Awareness Organization’s secretary P Ragupathy and the findings have shocked local activists. Vaithilingam, however, insisted that far from being a big spender, his regime had drastically reduced unnecessary expenditure by 50% in the past year. “The expenses incurred by the previous council of ministers stood at Rs 1.1 crore for a year. The new cabinet after assuming charge made it a point to reduce unnecessary expenses. We drastically reduced the expenses from Rs 1.1 crore to Rs 50 lakh or Rs 55 lakh per year,’‘ he told TOI.