Manish Sisodia also wanted to know if any bidding mechanism was adopted for issuing advertisements on social media. (Source: Express Photo by Amit Mehra) Manish Sisodia also wanted to know if any bidding mechanism was adopted for issuing advertisements on social media. (Source: Express Photo by Amit Mehra)

A week after the CBI registered a preliminary enquiry (PE) against Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, he wrote to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Saturday seeking information about the procedure followed by the Centre while issuing advertisements about its schemes on social media. In the letter written in Hindi to the Prime Minister’s principal secretary Nripendra Misra, Sisodia sought information about the advertisements related to the Centre’s Make in India campaign, the Narendra Modi app, Start up India and Digital India. Stating that he had seen advertisements of some central government schemes on social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Google, Sisodia said he wanted to know about the procedure that was followed while issuing these advertisements.

He wrote down 11 points to which he sought answers. These included information about the departments of the central government that were engaged in social media campaign of the four schemes, if any government or private advertisement/event management companies were engaged, and if any bidding mechanism was adopted for issuing advertisements on social media.

He also asked if these advertisements were aimed only at Indian consumers. If not, he asked which countries’ consumers the advertisements targeted. He asked how the payments were made by the Centre, who the developer and the owner of the Narendra Modi app is, and how much money was spent on advertisements about the app. Sisodia asked Misra to provide the information with the necessary documents.

The PE against Sisodia was initiated by the CBI on a complaint alleging that a consultant of a well-known PR company was hired by the Delhi government to promote the ‘Talk to AK’ campaign, and that a proposal of Rs 1.5 crore was prepared for this purpose. Denying the CBI’s claims, officials said the company was hired after issuing tenders as no government arm was equipped to deal with a social media campaign. The ‘Talk to AK’ campaign was held in July 2016, in which Kejriwal held a live interaction with the public through the ‘Talk to AK’ website.

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