BANGALORE: It is mid-year vacation for members of various standing committees in the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) Council, especially the education committee.

You can call it an excitement over the slight increase in pass percentage in BMP schools and colleges this time, or a mere "outing."

Undeterred by public criticism over the junkets by our city fathers last year, or even the delay in supply of textbooks and other study material in BMP schools till now, members of the education committee in the BMP Council are out on a junket to several prominent cities in the country as well as Nepal.

The education team left on the so-called "study tour" a week ago. But neither the BMP Council nor the State Government has permitted the tour. "The tour has been finalised at the committee level pending approval from the Council and Government. But it has been approved by BMP Commissioner K. Jairaj," sources in the BMP told The Hindu on Monday.

But not all from the committee seem to be interested in "learning." Of the seven members from the committee, only two — the chairperson H.P. Gayatri Shivappa and a member R. Keshava Murthy — have left. The BMP Education Officer Nishcal Prakash and Ms. Gayatri's husband have accompanied the two.

That's not all. Members of most of the other standing committees and leaders of all parties in the BMP are also touring the country. The ruling party leader H. Ravindra, Opposition leader B.R. Nanjundappa and leader of Bharatiya Janata Party A.H. Basvaraju, accompanied by a few corporators, are currently on a tour. Members of the standing committees on Accounts, Health, Horticulture, Appeals and Taxation and Finance are just back from their tour of various cities in north India.

Members of the standing committees on Town Planning and Works will also shortly leave for their "study tours," the sources said.

The BMP is spending over Rs. 60 lakh on the "study tours" this time. This being the last year of their five-year tenure, most of the corporators do not want to miss an opportunity of "learning." That is why even non-members have been accommodated in the travel groups.

"Each committee has a limit of spending up to Rs. 8 lakh. If some members of the committee are not interested in the tour, others have been included just to ensure that the earmarked money is spent judiciously. Some of the corporators have also taken their family members along with them," the sources said.

In 2004, the proposed nation-wide study tour by 64 members of the eight standing committees was stalled following criticism from the public and the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC). It was then KPCC president, B. Janardhana Poojary's "diktat" that the tour should be dropped, and it happened.

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