Hyderabad: Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu in his 10-month tenure has made the maximum number of official visits to Telangana state and AP. About 36 per cent of his trips has been to the two Telugu states, followed by Karnataka and Maharashtra.
These trips have been mainly for awards functions, convocations and multiple events. Mr Naidu has made 77 trips in 10 months, against 74 in five years by his predecessor Hamid Ansari. So far, Mr Naidu has visited 24 states while Mr Ansari had covered only 21.
In five months last year after he was elected Vice-President, Mr Naidu made 41 domestic tours and another 36 so far this year. This brings the average number of trips per month to eight.
The average for his predecessor was one. Mr Ansari made fewer visits to Telangana state and did not visit AP after bifurcation.
As per protocol and security requirements, traffic is stopped for the convoy of the Vice-President, and police bandobsat arranged.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made the highest number of domestic visits to Uttar Pradesh, followed by his home state Gujarat and then Maharashtra. Mr Modi has visited states in the south fewer times, unless he was invited for an inauguration or for campaigning for elections.
The PM’s official website shows that between June 2014 and April 2018, he made 25 visits to Uttar Pradesh, 23 to Gujarat and 18 to Maharashtra, all official tours. The least visited states were in the North-East, TS, AP, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Kerala.
