As many as 52 empanelled advertising agencies, which have been long handling advertisements and publicity campaigns for the Delhi government, have lost heavy business in the past few months.

For, a chunk of their revenue which came from the Delhi government is getting diverted to Shabdarth –the new in-house advertising agency set up by the AAP government this year for handling government campaigns.

Earlier, these empanelled private agencies in the A and B categories used to earn their revenue from the Delhi by designing the creative of an advertisement or a campaign, and also earning a 15 per cent commission on DAVP rates from the particular medium that was to run the advertisement.

However, they now claim that the Kejriwal government have slowly alienated them after they came to power early this year.

"First, they started designs their scripts in-house, eliminating the creative services offered by the agencies. However, we were still releasing advertisements to the channel concerned, based on the amount of discount we were providing, but that was also stopped," the owner of one of the affected agencies said on conditions of anonymity, adding the move is hurting the mid-level, smaller agencies.

In the previous Congress regime in Delhi, when a government advertisement was planned, all the agencies were asked to come up with a creative of which, the best was selected by either the CM or a minister. Later, these private agencies were entrusted with the job of running the advertisement in a selected medium.

Mukesh Gupta of Graphisads, another empanelled ad agency, said the move had not impacted them much because of the huge number of empanelled agencies, the quality of advertisements has gone down.

However, Delhi government officials defended their decision of setting up Shabdarth claiming it will save a lot of money this financial year for the Delhi government.

"Given that 15 per cent is the average commission taken by the ad agencies, we will save about Rs75 crore this year, if the entire Rs525 crore publicity budget is utilised," an official said.

Another official said that the government's publicity body has streamlined the process of making and releasing advertisements. "The process of designing ads, getting them approved and published has become faster as compared to previous years, as a result of which corruption has also gone down," the official claimed.

On an average, the Delhi government releases seven to eight advertisements a month. One of the recent week-long ad campaigns on the Dadri cow-lynching incident that was scripted in-house by the AAP government and released on radio and TV, would have cost the Delhi government about Rs 3 crore, but with Shabdarth, that was registered under the Societies Registration Act 1860, the cost is likely to go down to Rs2.55 crore, officials claimed.

The advertisement carried Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal's message to the masses that stated, 'poisonous netas' are encouraging riots and only the 'Aam Aadmi' can save the country.

Headed by deputy CM Manish Sisodia, Shabdarth serves the Delhi government, corporations, boards, societies and other bodies of Delhi.