NEW DELHI: After deciding that the government will not celebrate or organise functions to mark the birth or death anniversaries of anyone, except Mahatma Gandhi , the government has started a review of its policy on issuing advertisements on such occasions. Cabinet Secretary Ajit Kumar Seth has asked for a “review of the advertisement policy” as per a letter written by his office to all ministries, accessed by ET. The Home ministry has been asked to draw up a list of “prominent leaders for advertisements on their birth and death anniversaries” and the existing list of 15 leaders is expected to be significantly pruned. A senior government official said many government ministries issue advertisements separately on anniversaries of Indira Gandhi Rajiv Gandhi , Bhim Rao Ambedkar, Sardar Patel, Lal Bahadur Shastri Jawaharlal Nehru , Chaudhary Charan Singh, Swami Vivekananda, Bhagat Singh , Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Babu Jagjivan Ram and Mahatma Gandhi, while advertisements are also issued on the death anniversaries of many leaders. This leads to newspapers being splashed with multiple government advertisements on a given dayA government official said the idea was to have a prior notified list of only prominent leaders whose birth or death anniversaries will be marked with government advertisements and there should not be multiple advertisements from various government ministries on the same occasion.“The plan is to ensure that only the information and broadcasting ministry will issue a single advertisement on the given day and not a multitude of ministries like the social justice ministry, agriculture ministry, rural development ministry or any other government-run Public Sector Unit. The existing system of inserting a multitude of advertisements is a mockery and wastage of money,” the official said. The home ministry is now working on a revised list of leaders whose anniversaries will see insertion of a single memorial advertisement.Between 2008 and 2013, the government published newspaper advertisements on birth and death anniversaries of 15 former leaders and incurred an expenditure of Rs 142 crore on them, including spending Rs 53 crore on the advertisements issued regarding just three persons — Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.