After receiving severe criticism, the Arvind Kejriwal Government has reportedly proposed to cut down its publicity Budget from Rs 526 crore to Rs 126 crore for the year 2015-16. The Department of Information and Publicity (DIP) of the Delhi Government has proposed to return Rs 400 crore to the Finance Department after it failed to spend a substantial amount in the revised Budget estimate for 2015-16. The proposal is said to be under the active consideration of the Finance Department with final decision to be taken by the CM and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia.
The Arvind Kejriwal Government’s move to consolidate the publicity budget of various departments had earned wide-spread criticism from different political parties.
Top sources told The Pioneer that the DIP has decided to revise its Budget estimate and reduce its Budget amount from Rs 526 crore to Rs 126 crore for the current financial year.
Sources said the Government has been able to spend only about Rs 35 to Rs 40 crore (estimated figure) on publicity during the past nine months.
Earlier, Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president Ajay Maken had even filed a Public Interest litigation in the Delhi High Court against the publicity Budget. A complaint was also filed before the Anti-Corruption Branch, which has already initiated the probe against the DIP and had started issuing notices to its officers.
Prior to the AAP Government, the previous Governments used to earmark Budget separately to all the departments for publicity. The departments were free to utilise their respective Budget for publicity. But the AAP Government has clubbed the Budget amount in one head.
Soon after the Government announced huge increase in its publicity budget, Maken launched a scathing attack on Kejriwal, saying spending public money on “self publicity” amounted to corruption. He had said, “The AAP Government has set aside Rs 526 crore just for information and publicity and last year only Rs 24 crore was spent for the same. They have cut Budget from various other infrastructure development works and they are spending money on their own party workers and consultants. Is it not a form of corruption by spending more money on self publicityIJ”
Even local Delhi BJP leaders had accused the Government of spending people’s tax money on self promotion in violation of the Supreme Court guidelines.
The Government came under attack from its own MlA Pankaj Pushkar, who said it was a violation of the Supreme Court order that public money cannot be used for political propaganda. He had stated, “I’ve questioned the Government for spending such a large sum on advertisements, which is basically self-promotion. We have questioned other political parties for misusing public money, but now the AAP Government too is wasting the tax-payers’ money. This money could have been utilised for development purpose.”