Manish Sisodia, Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, delivered a press conference on Saturday with other Aam Aadmi Party leaders to speak about the BJP government’s expenditure on advertisements for their three-year anniversary in office.
Showing dailies from different states, Sisodia told reporters that, through different independent sources, AAP has learnt that the BJP spent Rs 2,000 crores to advertise.
Addressing reporters, Sisodia said, “A government should definitely do advertisements. But the purpose of the advertisements should be only to communicate with the masses, unlike what the BJP government did. They have advertisements on vikas (development) and susashan (good governance).”
But to spend state taxes on advertisements for their third year anniversary at a time when government schools and hospitals are in a poor state shouldn’t be permitted. The money could have been spent on welfare. So we ask the BJP to shell out their own cash for their anniversary advertisements.
We will appeal to the committees that were formed to protect the SC guidelines to make sure that the BJP pays for their ads.
Sisodia also said that the CAG can compare the AAP government’s advertisements to the BJP government’s to see if taxpayers’ money has been misused or not.
Recently, a CAG report accused the Delhi’s AAP government of spending a total of Rs 33.40 crore on releasing advertisements outside Delhi, violating advertisement guidelines issued by the SC.
On 2015, the SC issued a slew of guidelines to prevent ruling politicians from misusing taxpayers’ money for advertisements.
In March 2017, Lt Governor Anil Baijal has directed that Rs 97 crore be recovered from AAP that was allegedly "splurged" by the city government on advertisements in violation of the Supreme Court guidelines.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)