Who had the most number of foreign tours, is it Modi or Manmohan?

On Sunday, Amit Shah, BJP president, said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had visited fewer countries as compared to the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in his three years in office.

Mr. Shah has made this comparison between the number of foreign trips between the two prime ministers not for the first time. Responding to Congress’ criticism in the earlier 2015 regarding the number of trips that Mr. Modi was taking, according to Mr. Shah, Mr. Singh took the same number of trips abroad.

His defense was same both the times. He iterated that it was just that nobody knew when Mr. Singh went on foreign trips. In 2015, Mr. Shah said that “Thousands of Indians wait to welcome him and even foreign nations are eager to do business with India, when Modiji undertakes a trip abroad. He said the same statement on Sunday, that it’s the entire world that watches him (Mr. Modi).”

In order to check the claim made by Mr. Shah, the data related to both Prime Ministers’ travel details was gathered. It was sourced from the archive website of the former PM and the Ministry of External Affairs. The results were as follows:

Year 1-

Year 2-

Year 3-

During the UPA I government, a total 27 countries, were visited by Mr. Manmohan Singh during his first three years as Prime Minister i.e. from June 2004 to May 2007. PM Modi on the other hand visited nearly double that i.e. 49 countries, in the similar time span of June 2014 to May 2017.

Mr. Singh had higher number of foreign tours during his second term. However, 36 is the number which is nowhere close to Mr. Modi’s. Following is the year-wise break-up of data:

In two areas, Mr. Singh tops the number table. He visited one more country in comparison to the current PM during the first year of his second term. He visited 14 countries while, Mr. Modi visited 13.

The other is the number of days spent abroad. Mr. Singh spent 111 days abroad, visiting 36 countries during his second term. On the other hand, Mr. Modi spent 94 days abroad even he visited more number of countries.