PM Modi Hasn't Taken Any Leave In 9 Years, Attended Over 3,000 Events: PMO In RTI Response

The first question was how many days PM Modi has been in office since becoming India's Prime Minister in 2014.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Source : YouTube/BJP

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not taken a single day off from work in his nine years as Prime Minister of India, according to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in response to a Right to Information (RTI) request.

Prafful P Sarda, a Pune-based entrepreneur activist, asked two queries in his RTI appeal. The first question was how many days PM Modi has been in office since becoming India's Prime Minister in 2014, to which PMO responded: “The Prime Minister is on duty all the time. No leave has been availed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi since taking office.”

Sarda then requested "details about the number of days Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been present and attended various events and functions since becoming Prime Minister of India till date (sic)." The response includes a link to the PMO's website, which reveals that the total number of events since becoming Prime Minister of India in May 2014 has surpassed 3,000 (both in India and overseas).

Himanta Biswa Sarma, the Chief Minister of Assam, also uploaded a copy of the RTI on X (previously known as Twitter) and remarked, "My PM, my pride."

#MyPmMyPride pic.twitter.com/EPpkMCnLke

— Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) September 4, 2023

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar recently offered light on how the Prime Minister operates. Jaishankar met with members of the Indian community in Bangkok, where he stated: “I feel it’s been an enormous good fortune of the country to have someone like PM Modi at this time. And I am not saying this because he is the prime minister of the day and I am a member of his cabinet."

In 2016, an identical RTI inquiry yielded the same result. An RTI applicant had requested a copy of the country's Prime Minister's leave regulations and procedures from it and the Cabinet Secretariat at the time. “The Prime Minister can be said to be on duty all the time," the PMO had replied.