New Delhi: In a recent RTI report, it was revealed that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led Delhi government spent 64 crores between April-June 2021 on advertisement and publicity.
The RTI report uploaded by a Twitter user stated that, the party had spent over Rs.3.42 crores in the month of April 2021, 7.7 crore in May and 52.67 crores in June.
In a similar way, an RTI reply dated April 08 had revealed that the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government spent Rs 150 crores from January 2021 to March 2021 on advertisements and publicity through various mediums.
The RTI reply uploaded by a Twitter user Alok Bhatt revealed Rs 32.52 crores were spent on ads by the AAP government in January 2021, Rs 25.33 crores were spent in February 2021 and a whopping Rs 92.48 crores were spent in March 2021. This averages to Rs 1.67 crore daily when the health infrastructure in the national capital had begun to crumble amid the second wave of coronavirus.
The reply specifies that the total expenditure includes advertisements and publicity through print media, electronic media as well as the internet.
Further, Kejriwal government has spent over 800 crores in advertisement expenses in past two years.
Arvind Kejriwal was heavily criticized for advertising and promoting the apparent achievements of the AAP government through YouTube ads in April.
A few weeks ago it was reported that the Directorate General of Information and Public Relations informed RTI activist Anil Galgali that Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s Mahavikas Aghadi Government has spent Rs 155 crore on publicity campaigns in the last 16 months. About Rs 5.99 crore has been spent on social media. The Thackeray government is spending Rs 9.6 crore every month on publicity campaigns.
In the past few years, many reports and RTI responses revealed how the political parties in the country have been exuberantly spending loads of money just on advertising and publicity campaigns.
The government and the parties were highly criticized for the same especially when the country was fighting the second wave and faced shortage of oxygen concentrators and ventilators, while the governments were spending tons of money on campaigns.