With general elections round the corner, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has gone on a media blitzkrieg. Several ministries have put out large advertisements in leading newspapers, which talk about their achievements in the last five years.
Thus, ads of the civil aviation ministry wax eloquent on how the sector has got a huge facelift ever since the UPA came to power — passenger services as well as the infrastructure. The other ministries that have placed such advertisements are health, social justice, food processing, science and technology, commerce and human resources development.
“We have achieved all that we had promised when we came to power. And this has been the centre of our publicity campaign — the achievements of the programmes of UPA,” Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting Anand Sharma said. The tenor, said sources in ad agencies, is different from the India Shining campaign the National Democratic Alliance ran in its final days. “The current ads back the claims made with solid data,” said a source who did not wish to be named.
Interestingly, several state governments, too, have printed similar advertisements — Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, to name a few. Here, the lead, of course, has been taken by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati. These ads talk of her new schemes. And she has announced over two dozen schemes in the last couple of months. It is an open secret that she fancies her chances as the country’s leader in the next elections.
Like Mayawati, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, too, has launched a slew of programmes and schemes. To make sure the message is not lost on the electorate, his government has put out several ads in newspapers.
Government sources said that the Department of Audio and Visual Publicity may have spent close to Rs 30-40 crore in publishing these ads in the last one month — around 15 per cent of its annual budget. Though such ads come at a discount of 30-35 per cent, for the newspapers these have brought in some extra bucks.
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The bad news is, the tap will be put out abruptly once the Election Commission announces the dates of the general elections and the model code of conduct for political parties comes into play. “There will not be any new announcements on policy front once the election code comes into effect and we are very much aware of this,” Sharma said.
Still, ad industry sources said that political parties will take over after that and indulge in heavy-duty media buying. The Congress is known to have an advertising and media budget of Rs 150 crore for the elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party, currently in Opposition, too is adding final touches to its media campaign.