Manish Sisodia questions Centre on social media schemes

New Delhi: Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia shot off a letter to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s principal secretary, Nripendra Mishra, asking him to furnish details regarding the process of payments made for social media campaigns for various Centre-run schemes.

Mr Sisodia is under the scanner of CBI for the Delhi government’s social media campaign, “Talk to AK.”

He sought to know details regarding the Central government’s agencies, private advertisement and event management companies, asking whether a bidding process was adopted by the Centre for advertisements for the Centre-run schemes on Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

“For social media campaign, payments have to be made through credit cards and credit limit only. Which departments’, government-run agencies’ or private agencies’ credit cards and credit limits were used for making payments for social media campaign for Centre’s schemes?” the deputy CM said in his letter in Hindi.

Mr Sisodia asked the PM’s principal secretary to also shed light on the procedure adopted for issuing adverts for government’s social media campaigns for ‘Make in India,’ ‘Narendra Modi app,’ ‘Startup India,’ and ‘Digital India.’

He also sought to know who has developed ‘Narendra Modi app’ and who has the ownership right of this app and how much money was spent on advertisements for the app.

 Last week, the CBI registered a preliminary enquiry against Mr Sisodia and some unnamed state government officials to probe alleged irregularities in the “Talk to AK” campaign. The campaign was an interactive session of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, under which people could reach out to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader through social media.

The AAP dispensation had refuted the charges, saying no consultant was hired for the “Talk to AK” campaign.

According to the Delhi government, a public relations company was appointed through proper tender by the government in June last year.