Nitya Travels and Tours booked the travel and stay for the two in Washington DC, where they had been invited for the Fourth Annual Globalisation Conference in October, 2005. The travel agency is still waiting for its bills to be cleared.
The travel and lodging expenses were to be taken care of by the host. For any sponsored international meet, delegates first get the tickets booked and send the bills to the host country after the tour. This booking was also carried out in a similar fashion. After the tour, the commissioner and the mayor were to send their bills to the US for payments. They, however, didn’t make the payment to the travel agency and the tour operator has been doing the rounds of the MCD office to get his payment since then.
Both Mehta and Singh are no longer in office. After Mehta, the MCD has had two commissioners - A K Nigam and now K S Mehra. Farhad Suri followed Singh and now Arti Mehra is the Mayor.
“The bill should have been cleared by Satbir Singh himself. He didn’t bother about making the payment after his tour and Farhad Suri, also from the Congress, didn’t bother to clear the pending bill either,” Arti Mehra said.
The travel agency has brought this issue to the notice of the Mayor. “I have written to the commissioner’s office and I am hoping that the payment will be made immediately. In case it doesn’t work out, I will have to write to Rakesh Mehta,” Mehra said. Mehta is currently Delhi Chief Secretary.
Suresh Mittal, owner of Nitya Travels and Tours, hopes the bill is settled soon. “My son has been going to the MCD office for three years now but we have not got anything. We hope our bills are cleared,” Mittal said.