Why Delhi LG Has Asked To Recover Rs 97 Crore From AAP

New Delhi: Delhi LG VK Saxena has directed the Chief Secretary to recover Rs. 97 crore from the Aam Aadmi Party for political advertisements published as government advertisements. The LG's directions comes in the wake of 2015 Supreme Court orders, 2016 Delhi High Court orders and 2016 CCRGA orders that have been allegedly flouted by the AAP government. CCRGA or Committee on Content Regulation in Government Advertising is set up by Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. 

AAP couldn't provide clean water to Delhi people: BJP

Following the LG's order, the Delhi BJP has called Arvind Kejriwal a leader who does 'propaganda with public money'. The party has said that Kejriwal has not been able to provide even clean water to the people of Delhi because of using public money to polish his image. The party has demanded that Arvind Kejriwal should immediately deposit this public money in the government treasury.

Delhi State BJP president Virendra Sachdeva said in a press conference on Tuesday that after the matter came to light, it has become clear that Arvind Kejriwal was trying to polish his image with public money. 

Sachdeva said the government was repeatedly questioned in this matter, but it has been avoiding giving any answer on this. He said that this explains why the government could not even provide clean water to the people even after seven years of coming to power.

'CCRGA had asked Kejriwal to deposit Rs 97 crore in govt treasury'

Attacking the policies of the Aam Aadmi Party, BJP MP Manoj Tiwari said that the Supreme Court-appointed committee CCRGA has asked Arvind Kejriwal to deposit Rs 97 crore in the government treasury. This matter is only till March 2017, but almost five years have passed since then and during this also Kejriwal government continued to campaign with public money. He said that there should also be an inquiry on the matter that how much public money has been spent by Kejriwal on his personal campaign so far. It should be returned to the public.

'Annual expenditure on publicity increased to Rs 600 crore'

Leader of Opposition Ramvir Singh Bidhuri said that till 2013, Delhi governments used to spend only up to Rs 18 crore annually on their publicity, but after Kejriwal came to power, this amount increased to about Rs 600 crore. The government has planned to spend even more money on advertising this year.

Bidhuri alleged that this advertisement of the government was also being run through his own party workers. In this way, public money was looted by showing expenses in the case of advertisement also. He said that this scam could not be of Rs 97 crore but of Rs 400 crore. There should be a CBI inquiry into this.