Karnataka blew ₹20 crore sending officials on 95 foreign trips, including a ₹4.7 crore Davos jaunt, and the majority could not be bothered to file the mandatory study reports explaining what they learned. The government has now banned all foreign travel — not for accountability reasons, but because they ran out of excuses.
The Karnataka government spent ₹20.28 crore of public money funding 58 foreign trips for officials since 2023 — with another 37 trips allegedly self-funded, which in bureaucratic parlance means "we will never know." The crown jewel was a delegation visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos that cost ₹4.7 crore, presumably to learn cutting-edge governance techniques that were then promptly forgotten, since the officials never submitted the mandatory study reports. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah placed the data before the Assembly, revealing that the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms had been waiting — with the patience unique to Indian bureaucracy — for travel reports that most officers simply never filed. The government responded by banning all official foreign travel until the reports materialize, which is like grounding your teenager after they have already graduated college.