AAP govt violated ad campaign norms, spending rose by 1,200% in 5 yrs: CAG report-OxBig News Network

A Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)’s audit report has revealed that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government’s spending on advertising campaigns surged by a whopping 1,200 per cent between 2018 and 2022.

As per the findings of the report on economic, social and general sectors and public sector undertakings (PSUs), yet to be tabled in the Delhi Assembly, the advertisement and publicity expenditure of the Delhi Government was Rs 46.90 crore in 2018 that raised to Rs 612.80 crore by the end of 2022.

The CAG report observed that the advertising campaigns were also released in violation of guidelines of the Supreme Court on content regulation of government advertising as these were found to be unjustified and released outside of the NCT of Delhi with disproportionate expenditure.

“There was no prior exercise to identify target audiences nor was there any post campaign impact assessment,” an excerpt from the CAG report, accessed by The Tribune, read.

It stated that the payments were released to publicity agencies without ensuring adequate monitoring and evaluation of their work. Moreover, the government did not maintain any “expenditure control register”, which ultimately resulted in the release of advertisements without budget provisions.

“The Department of Information and Publicity (DIP) released payment of Rs 57.90 crore during 2020-2022 for advertisement released during 2015-17 in violation of the SC’s guidelines without following due procedure,” the report read.

The mechanism to address complaints received against government advertising of Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) was either deficient or non-existent.

The CAG report also mentions the issue of recovery of around Rs 97 crore from the AAP for its political advertisements, allegedly published in the garb of government advertisements. Of this, the DIP had already paid Rs 42 crore while around Rs 54 crore was still pending for the payment to agencies.

L-G VK Saxena directed the Chief Secretary to recover Rs 97 crore from the AAP and a letter was issued to party convener Arvind Kejriwal in this regard. However, as the agencies who were not paid the pending amount, they approached different courts and tribunals, following which the DIP decided to release the payment with the approval of former Deputy CM Manish Sisodia.

The audit report observed that a payment of Rs 43.621 crore was released to 94 agencies by the DIP in the absence of any court order and without bringing it to the cognisance of L-G.

The L-G, while approving the proposal to recover Rs 97 crore from the AAP, had also issued directions to ensure strict adherence to the principles laid down by the apex court for content regulation of government advertisements.

The CAG audit observed that during 2019-20, there were still instances where advertisements and publicity campaigns of the Delhi Government were not in compliance with the SC’s guidelines.

The CAG office recommended the government to ensure that the advertisement campaign complies with the guidelines and principles approved by the apex court. It further recommended that the expenditure on advertisement “should be proportionate to the cost of implementation of schemes”.