The Delhi Government has come under the lens of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) for a sharp rise in its ad expenditure. As per the CAG report tabled in Delhi Assembly on Friday, figures for 2015-2016 show that the AAP Government’s ad expenditure was Rs 114.21 crore which included Rs 28.71 crore being spent outside Delhi.

According to the report, this was a sharp surge from its ad campaign expenditure in 2013-2014 when only Rs 47.74 crore was spent.

Attacking the city government for “going beyond its responsibility” in using 86 per cent of allocated funds in one of the publicity campaigns outside Delhi, the CAG report stated that the Delhi government had approved publishing of advertorials (two full pages) in 26 national newspapers and 37 regional newspapers in 14 states.

“Scrutiny of expenditure registers revealed that apart from the expenditure of Rs 81.23 crore by DIP, a further amount of Rs 20.23 crore was paid by DIP in 2016-2017 for advertisements released in 2015-2016 bringing the total expenditure on advertisements released during 2015-2016 to Rs 101.46 crore. Thus, the actual cost of advertisements released during 2015-2016 may go beyond Rs 114.21 crore” the report said.

DIP, which is the Directorate of Information and Publicity, is responsible for informing and publicising the programmes, policies and activities of the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD). It looks after the publicity requirement of all its departments.

On May 13, 2015, the Supreme Court, in a judgment, had approved the ‘Guidelines on Content Regulation of Government Advertising’ with a view to preventing arbitrary use of public funds for advertising without any attendant public interest. The CAG audit report found that in several instances, work of the government was projected as the AAP's achievements through the use of its symbol “broom” and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s name. This was in violation of the guidelines laid down by the SC.

“Advertisements that attribute the achievements of Delhi Government to personalities and include specific written, pictoral and visual reference to a political party or its symbol are evidently directed at promoting the political interest of a political party and were contrary to the fundamental principles governing expenditure from public funds as well as the guidelines approved by the apex court,” it said.

The report also observed that the AAP government had incurred expenditure of Rs 24.29 crore on advertisements and publicity campaigns that were not in conformity with the generally accepted principles of financial propriety or the guidelines on content regulation approved by the Supreme Court.

The report also highlighted that there was no assessment of the post-campaign impact by the government. “The guidelines provide that in case of large volume advertisement campaigns, post-campaign impact assessment is necessary to be included in the planning process itself which should identify the indicators to measure success when the campaign ended,” the report added.

Expenditure and allocations

The expenditure incurred in 2013-2014 was Rs 47.74 crore.

The expenditure incurred in 2014-2015 was Rs 27.43 crore.

For the budget of 2015-2016, DIP proposed an allocation of Rs 26.90 crore which included Rs 20 crore for ‘other charges’ and the balance for salary and other recurring expenditure. However, DIP, was allocated Rs 500 crore under the head ‘Advertisement and Publicity’ and Rs 22 crore under the head ‘other charges’ totaling Rs 522 crore. This allocation was subsequently reduced to Rs 100 crore in the revised estimates.