The Delhi BJP on Tuesday attacked the AAP over Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena directing the chief secretary to recover Rs 97 crore from the ruling party for "political advertisements".
Addressing a press conference, Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri along with MP Manoj Tiwari and Harish Khurana alleged an "advertisement scam" in the city government and demanded a CBI inquiry into it.
The BJP also said that the Kejriwal government broke the rules while spending the people’s money for its own publicity. "We see an advertisement scam here, and demand a CBI inquiry into it. We will approach the LG in this regard," he said. Bidhuri also claimed that the amount to be recovered from the ruling party in Delhi would rise to Rs 400 crore. Bidhuri claimed that on the request of the BJP, the L-G has asked the Director Vigilance to investigate the matter following which Saxena directed the Chief Secretary to recover this amount. “In 2015, the Supreme Court had constituted a committee to prepare guidelines for advertisements for all governments in a similar matter. In 2016, this committee, whose name was Committee of Content Regulation in Government Advertising (CCRGA), issued guidelines. The same committee found that the Delhi government had violated the guidelines in advertisements worth about Rs 97 crore 15 lakhs,” LoP said. “Accordingly, the L-G directed that this amount should be recovered from the AAP. The Aam Aadmi Party also went to the court against this order but did not get any relief,” LoP added.
Terming the AAP government a ‘propaganda - based government’, state BJP Working president Virendra Sachdeva said that the work of the Kejriwal government is only visible on advertisement in papers instead of ground.
“It is very unfortunate that despite using the taxpayer’s money for the development of the city, the Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is spending it to shine his face. Misusing government resources for their own good is in the nature of the AAP government,” said Sachdeva. Criticizing Kejriwal for calling the order of L-G another ‘love letter’, Sachdeva said that the CM is calling the order of the Lieutenant Governor as another love letter to reduce the seriousness of the matter, but the truth is that this is not a love letter, it is a white paper of their corruption.
However, the Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri alleged that the AAP government has carried out an “advertisement scam” and demanded a CBI inquiry into the matter.
BJP MP Manoj Tiwari said that Kejriwal did the work of shining his face with the government exchequer money but after the spending limit was reached as per the instructions by CCRGA, set up by the Supreme Court, he did not deposit the amount instead kept spending it like water.