"About 40 per cent of the budget earmarked for display advertisements was spent on Hindi newspapers during 2011-12, despite the fact that 10 states and UTs do not have even a single Hindi daily newspaper and several big states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Odisha have few Hindi dailies," Tewari informed Lok Sabha.
Replying to another question, the Minister said a sum of Rs 375.31 crore was spent on newspaper advertisements during 2011-12, while the figure in the current fiscal so far stands at around Rs 99 crore.
He added that a sum of Rs 179 crore was spent on audio- visual ads during 2011-12, while an expenditure of Rs 13.95 crore has been incurred in 2012-13.
A total of Rs 44.31 crore was spent on outdoor publicity during last fiscal and the figure for current year is Rs 5.33 crore, he said.
Replying to another query about outstanding dues, the minister said Directorate of Advertisement and Visual Publicity was to pay Rs 9.84 crore to Doordarshan while Health Ministry owed Rs 76.99 lakh to the national broadcaster.
He added that Doordarshan was also supposed to get Rs 1.76 crore from Rural Development Ministry and Rs 1.17 crore from Ministry of Labour and Employment. In all a total of Rs 13.55 crore were the outstanding dues accrued to Doordarshan, Tewari said.
