The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi on Thursday apologised for the omission of the words “Socialist” and “Secular” from ads published across national dailies on the occasion of Constitution Day.

A senior government official said Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had taken a “stern view of the matter” and had directed the Director of Information and Publicity to conduct an inquiry and submit a report on the faux pas within four days.

Technical glitch

According to a source close to Mr. Kejriwal, who is understood to have been told about the omission over the phone call by “an acquaintance” on Thursday morning, the Chief Minister said the exclusion of the two words “seemed to have occurred due to a technical glitch” and a “copy-paste exercise from a website operated by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) gone terribly wrong.”

The Hindu has learnt that the last government department to have accessed paperwork related to the ad is understood to be the Department for the Welfare of SC, ST and OBC. As a matter of course, officials of the rank of Deputy Directors of government departments issuing ads sign on them before forwarding these to the Principal Secretary to the Minister concerned, ahead of forwarding these to the Director of the Information and Publicity (DIP) for publishing.