Delhi’s Aam Aadmi Party government spent nearly Rs 15 crore on advertisements in the print media during the 91-day period till May 11, according to an Right to Information reply.
The list of publications which had received money from the Kejriwal government for carrying the advertisements interestingly included dailies from Kerala, Karnataka, Odisha and Tamil Nadu among other states.
The Delhi government disbursed a total amount of Rs 14.56 crore for advertising excluding broadcast from February 10 to May 11, according to a reply provided to a RTI query by advocate Aman Panwar.
The AAP government came under attack from the opposition Congress on Sunday for its advertising campaigns.
“On one hand we don’t have money to pay to ‘safai karamcharis’ for salary, on one hand we don’t have money even to pay for pension, but on the other they are spending huge amounts(for advertisements) for self publicity,” Congress leader Ajay Maken said.
The Delhi government spent around Rs 5 crore in publicising the two rounds of the odd-even scheme, implemented for 15 days each in January and April respectively, the Lok Sabha was told recently.
Minister of State for Home Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary said that expenditure of print media stood at Rs 1.67 crore while an amount of Rs 3.72 crore was spent to advertise the road-rationing policy on electronic media.
“As informed by the government of NCT of Delhi, the total expenditure on odd and even campaign so far is Rs 539.41 lakh (Rs 5.39 crore),” the minister said in reply to a question.
The Opposition has targeted Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal over the odd-even measure, enforced as an anti-pollution initiative by the AAP government, terming it as
a “publicity stunt”.