CAG bashes Delhi government over advertisements spend
India Today
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) today bashed the Delhi Government for high spending on advertisements.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) today bashed the Delhi Government for high spending on advertisements. It said due to non-routing of classified advertisements by five state corporations through their administrative departments, an excess expenditure of Rs 1.10 crore was incurred as they could not avail the DAVP rates, which were lower than the commercial charges.
Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said the Kejriwal-government has been able to keep the national capital a revenue surplus state because of “honest politics”. “This is the ‘Kejriwal Model of governance’. When every state government is facing a huge revenue deficit, it’s only and only the Arvind Kejriwal government that is in running revenue surplus since 2015. Honest politics brings prosperity,” he tweeted.
The CAG said the audit team also faced constraints in accessing files. In the Department of Information and Publicity (DIP), the CAG requisitioned for records pertaining to all 225 creative advertisements released by four selected departments for the audit during 2016-18. However, the records in respect of only 76 advertisements (34 per cent) were produced.
“As the DIP did not make available all files requisitioned during the audit, a comprehensive evaluation of the expenditure on advertisements and publicity by the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) was not possible,” the CAG said.
However, the CAG pointed out that Delhi has been able to maintain a revenue surplus because certain expenditures are covered by the Centre. “The NCT of Delhi has been able to maintain a revenue surplus largely on account of pension liabilities of GNCTD employees being borne by the government of India. In addition, expenditure of Delhi Police is also borne by the ministry of home affairs,” the CAG report stated.
“It was observed that the five selected PSUs were publishing classified advertisements at commercial rates (through empanelled advertising agencies) instead of routing these through their respective administrative departments to Shabdarth (society set up in 2015 to function as an ad agency for the government) for publication at non-commercial rates/DAVP rates. This resulted in excess expenditure of Rs 1.10 crore in 81 cases test-checked (out of 196 cases),” the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General said.
The five corporations were Delhi Tourism and Transportation Development Corporation, Delhi Transco Limited, IPGCL and PPCL, and Delhi Transport Corporation.
