After SC rap, Delhi govt.’s advt. expenditure comes down by 86%, reveals RTI

Delhi government slashes advertisement spending from ₹186.2 crore to ₹26.2 crore after Supreme Court intervention.

The advertisement expenditure of the Delhi government slumped to ₹26.2 crore in 2023-24 from ₹186.2 crore a year earlier, revealed a response to an RTI application filed by Kanhaiya Kumar, a Bihar-based activist.

The expenditure fell after the Supreme Court criticised the Delhi government last year for not sparing funds for the Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) project despite allocating a much greater sum for its advertisement budget, a Delhi government official said.

In July last year, the Delhi government assured the Supreme Court of paying its contribution towards the RRTS project after the court threatened to divert its advertisement budget to pay for the public transport facility. A Bench led by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul had noted that the Delhi government had spent ₹1,100 crore on advertisements over the previous three years, which was much more than its share of ₹415 crore in the RRTS project.

“After the Supreme Court’s intervention, the government did an audit and decided to cut down on advertisement expenditure. The spending on digital and television advertisements was drastically reduced and, in the case of newspapers, most of the advertisements outside Delhi were stopped. Also, full-page advertisements were reduced to half-page or quarter-page ads,” the official said.

The 2023-24 budget estimate for advertisement was ₹385 crore, which was reduced to ₹26.2 crore following the changes, the officer added.

“There was a cut in expenditure across all departments. The government is not trying to stop advertisements completely, but the focus is on reducing the costs,” he added.

As per the 2024-25 budget estimate, ₹66 crore has been set aside for advertisements by the Department of Information and Publicity for the current financial year.