Cong, BJP rap Kejriwal government for ad blitz

An RTI query showed the AAP government spent Rs 14.5 cr on advertisements in newspapers between February 10 and May 10

Both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress have hit out at the advertising blitz of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) here, which runs this city’s government.

“Political bribery”, said the BJP; “splurge(ing) public wealth on self-promotion and self-publicity”, said the Congress.

The latter’s spokesperson, Shobha Oza, stated a query filed under the Right to Information (RTI) law had showed the city government spent Rs 14.5 crore on advertisements in newspapers between February 10 and May 10. That was Rs 16 lakh a day on such ads, in Delhi and elsewhere, too, she said.

She added the RTI query was on ads across all media platforms (TV, radio, hoardings, etc) but the Delhi government had revealed details of prints ads alone. The party said its calculation was that the Arvind Kejriwal government spent close to Rs 100 crores on ads in the past three months. What, it demanded, was the justification for ‘outstation ads’ by his government?

This “blatant misuse of taxpayer money” was even more shocking, it said, because the Kejriwal government had long delayed on the allocations for pay of sanitation workers, old-age and widow pensions and those for disabled people.

Incidentally, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had on Monday decried excessive advertising as akin to “paid news”. “We need to see whether excessive advertisements become political bribery,” he said. Oza said Jaitley’s BJP and the AAP were guilty of the same offence. “Kejriwal and (Prime Minister) Modi want to see their faces glorified in large newspapers and TV ads, at the expense of hard-earned money of the hapless taxpayer.”

She alleged that from May 2014 to May 2015 the Modi Government spent Rs 27 lakh per day on advertisements (according to DAVP figures) while in the last 90 days the Aam Aadmi Party Government in Delhi has spent Rs 16 Lakh per day.