Austerity fever catches up: Pranab leads, others follow

New Delhi, Sep 12 (PTI) Austerity fever caught up with
in the Union Cabinet on Saturday as a host of union ministers
vowed to cut down on travel and other expenses, following the
example set by Finance Minister of India Pranab Mukherjee who
travelled by economy class on Saturday.

Mukherjee, who is in the midst of a controversy over
austerity measures imposed by his ministry, flew to east
Indian city Kolkata on Saturday morning by economy class of a
budget airline.

His office said he would return on Sunday by economy
class on an Air India flight.

The austerity drive was joined by a number of other
ministers, including Vilasrao Deshmukh, Veerappa Moily, Anand
Sharma, Sushilkumar Shinde, Praful Patel, Mamata Banerjee,
Krishna Tirath, Jairam Ramesh and Dinesh Trivedi, who vowed to
cut down on trave and other expenses.

Mukherjee might also cancel a visit to Cyprus for a
Commonwealth Ministers' meeting to which he had planned to go
by a special aircraft, sources close to him said.

They said he would fly ordinary class if he flies abroad
for a World Bank meeting in Turkey sometime later.

"It's nothing new to me. During elections and whenever I
travel on commercial flights, I almost (always) travelled
economy class. It's nothing new," Mukherjee told reporters in
Kolkata. PTI