nagpur the civic body always pleads lack of funds but it has flouted rules to liberally spend tax payers money on air travel for mayor archana dehankar and other officials in the last 18 months since archana dehankar assumed mayors office after maya iwnate she has travelled by air on 29 occasions the trips include an international tour of australia and china and visits to cities like srinagar trivendrum guwahati bangalore kolkata lucknow mumbai pune and indore for various reasons the cashstrapped nmc spent rs 1611 lakh on air tickets for dehankar and others a senior nmc official informed that most of the times dehankar travelled to mumbai to attend official meetings like mayors conference and meetings with state government ministers in mantralaya however she preferred air travel even while attending workshops conducted by the autonomous training institute all india institute of local self government aiilsg which included trips to tourist destinations like trivandrum srinagar and guwahati the trainingcumpleasure trips were attended by dehankar along with other office bearers of ruling bjp at a cost of rs 1250 lakh a senior nmc official said on condition of anonymity the aiilsg training is not mandatory for the mayor or any office bearers they were not workshops but pleasure trips the mayor deputy mayor and other office bearers who attended it should have personally borne all expenses made on these trips a senior corporator said that after spending nearly rs 8 lakh on an international tour of china and australia dehankar and deputy mayor shekhar sawarbandhe had assured they will prepare a report and put it up before the civic house for implementation however this report was never submitted dehankar clarified to toi that aiilsg is an educational institution recognized by the state government its training workshops always give something new to office bearers while performing duties in local self government representatives of mumbai pune and thane municipal corporations too attend such workshops on a regular basis she added dehankar also admitted that she travelled to mumbai frequently for meetings with state government officials she said i am not aware about the number of trips i made to mumbai for meetings or training workshops but they were official meetings for some or the other nmc related work speakoutnagpurtimesgroupcom