Govt has spent Rs 100 cr and not Rs 500 cr on ads, says Sisodia

Sisodia was speaking during the ‘calling attention’ motion of the Delhi Assembly on Friday.

Deputy CM, in support of the advertisement policy of the government said: “We (AAP government) know communication, if you don’t know communication, it is your (BJP) problem.”

Targeting political rivals, Sisodia said that the people, who alleged that the Delhi government has spent Rs 526 crore on advertisements, should be ashamed of such act and should apologise for making such ‘false’ allegations.

Citing the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report, Sisodia claimed that the government has spent only around Rs 74 crore on advertisements. He said: “The CAG report says that nearly Rs 101 crore were spent on advertisements, out of which 20 crore were spent in previous year, thus it comes to around Rs 80 crores, further we (government) have saved Rs 6 crore by releasing ads through our own agency (Shabdarth), which brings down the figure to Rs 74 crore.”

Sisodia further noted that by clarifying that how much does the Delhi government actually spent on advertisement, the CAG report has given the government a clean chit from the allegations made by the Opposition and other political units.

Sisodia strongly said: “Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Amit Shah and others should come forward and apologise for making baseless allegations.”

“Our officials told me that the CAG is tightly scrutinising advertisement expenditure, I welcomed it and I have full faith on CAG,” Sisodia noted.

Meanwhile, the deputy CM claimed: “I met CAG and requested them to audit two of our departments, namely, Health and Education, with same strictness and sincerity, so that we can find out the lacks of our expenditure in these two departments.”

“I also urged them (CAG) to make a comparative audit of at least three or four states’ advertisement spendings, so that people could know the reality but they didn’t accept any of my requests,” Sisodia added.

Citing examples of other state governments who advertise out of their states, especially in Delhi editions of various newspapers, deputy CM mentioned, Punjab, Uttrakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and a few others.

Targeting the Centre, he said: “The Centre has spent Rs 1,000 crore on advertisement only to mark the second anniversary of the Modi government.”

Sisodia confidently said: “We used advertisement expenses effectively and in a utilised manner.” He said that to improve and grow trade in Delhi, it is needed that the government should communicate with traders throughout the country and apprise them about the government’s policies for traders in the Capital city. “We publicised good works, what’s wrong with that?” Sisodia questioned.