Taking cue from Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan (all BJP-ruled States), the Arvind Kejriwal Government has approved a proposal to set up a new advertisement agency called Shabdarth, to handle its publicity and advertisement campaigns.
Delhi Cabinet has approved the proposal on Thursday. Shabdarth will be set up under the Societies Registration Act 1860. This agency will prepare the content and design of the advertisements. The advertisement of all the departments, autonomous bodies, boards, corporations, societies and other bodies of Delhi will be released from this agency.
The employees of Shabdarth will not be Government servants. They will be employees of Shabdarth. The agency is likely to start working with a loan of Rs50 lakh to meet its initial expenses. This amount may be provided as loan to the society, which will be repaid in five years.
The new agency Shabdarth will generate its own revenue, partly from the commission (5 per cent; the rest 10 per cent will be passed on to the Government) it will retain. This clearly means that DIP will be meant for issuing only releases. It may be noted that the erstwhile Sheila Dikshit Government had also approved proposal called Dilli Samvad to handle its publicity and advertisement campaigns in 2009, but the same did not materialise.
According to proposal, the Delhi Government is expected to save more than Rs15 crore annually that otherwise is paid as commission. The Delhi Government spends Rs100 crore on publicity annually. If the Delhi Government has it its own agency for preparation of creatives and release of advertisements, it can save crores on agency commission. If the agency is allowed to retain 5 per cent of the commission to meet its expenses and become self-sustaining, it can still save 10 per cent of the total advertisement expenses of Delhi Government.
In Delhi, the advertisement needs of the Government are presently met by empanelling private agencies in different segments including print, audio, visual, outdoor and multimedia. Whenever this directorate or any department of the State Government needs to take up any campaign, it invites creative from the empanelled agencies and the agencies whose creatives are found to be the best is selected and the advertisement is released through that particular agency. The agency gets 15 per cent commission on the DAVP rates from the concerned publication.
Justifying the need for the Government to have its own agency, officials said for publicity, now the Government was totally dependent on private agencies, which deprives the Government of 15 per cent discount being offered by publications. Strangely, most of the content of the Cabinet proposal has been obtained from its earlier proposal that was approved in 2009 by Delhi Cabinet.
With the new agency handling Government campaigns, will there be any work for the empanelled agencies with the State GovernmentIJ “In case of lack of capacity or urgency, the Directorate of Information and Publicity, with the approval of the Minister-in-charge of the department, may also release advertisements through any of the empanelled agencies,” officials said.