After facing severe criticism and subsequent failure to spend a substantial amount of the budget it had allocated for information and publicity, the AAP government has reportedly proposed to cut down its budget from Rs 526 crore to Rs 126 crore for the year 2015-16. The department of information and publicity of the city government has proposed to return Rs 400 crore to the finance department after it failed to spend a substantial amount earmarked in the revised budget estimate for 2015-16.
The AAP government’s move to consolidate the publicity budget of various departments had earned widespread criticism from different political parties. A highly-placed source said the department of information and publicity has already decided to revise its budget estimate and reduce its budget from Rs 526 crore to Rs 126 crore for the current financial year. The department has reportedly proposed to return Rs 400 crore to the government in the revised budget estimate. The proposal is said to be under the active consideration of the finance department. The final decision to this effect will likely be taken by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia.
A senior officer said that the AAP government had been able to spend only about Rs 35 to Rs 40 crore on publicity during the past eight months. The AAP government’s decision to consolidate the publicity budget had invited widespread criticism from the political parties. 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 department of information and publicity 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, Mr Maken had launched a scathing attack on chief minister Arvind 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 publicity ”
Even Delhi BJP leaders had accused the Kejriwal government of spending taxpayers’ money on self-promotion in violation of the Supreme Court guidelines.
The Kejriwal 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 said: “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.”
