Setting the stage for a fresh face-off between the Delhi government and the Centre, a central committee has alleged that the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) violated some of the guidelines issued by the Supreme Court past year on regulating the content of government advertising.
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The protest against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his ministers and Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung, for being out of the city was led by Delhi Congress unit chief Ajay Maken. With its alibi for the unsatisfactory performance of the Delhi government – interference by the Lieutenant Governor and non-cooperation from the Central government – looking increasingly stale, the Aam Aadmi Party has frittered away a lot of public goodwill that catapulted it to power.
The Government of India’s committee on content regulation of government advertising has indicted the Delhi government for violating guidelines enlisted by Supreme Court in its order dated May 13, 2015. “Such politically motivated committees can not pass judgments”. The nine areas were outstation and national level ads; ads in newspapers allegedly designed as newspaper reports; false and misleading ads; large-scale ads on anniversary of AAP government; ads for self-glorification and targeting of political opponents; ads against the media; ads mentioning the party in power by name; ads on issues outside the jurisdiction of the state government; and unequal distribution of ads to patronize select media houses. Previous governments worked within the constraints imposed by Delhi’s peculiar hybrid status that make it neither a full-fledged Union territory nor a State.
The committee said that it had received a complaint against the AAP government from Maken on May 11 this year, accusing it of violating the court’s guidelines in nine areas. However, the Delhi high court ordered on August 10 that Maken’s complaint would be decided by this committee as expeditiously as possible, preferably within six weeks from the date of the order.
The Delhi government submitted its comments on August 30, a day after the deadline set by the committee, it claimed.
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The Tandon committee has also said that the Delhi government has issued advertisements on incidents that took place in other States such as advertisements issues on the incident of lynching in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh and the print advertisement issued after some violent incidents in Haryana under the title, ” a letter to the people of Haryana” show that the Government of NCT of Delhi used the mode of Government advertisements to publicise the personal or political opinion of the Chief Minister on incidents which took place in other States. It found the AAP government’s ad rebutting a report on a TV channel to be “wasteful expenditure”. The Delhi government said that the ads were approved by the Deputy Chief Minister of the state. “Since this is a clear violation of the para (6) (3) (iii) of the Supreme Court guidelines quoted above, the committee upholds the allegation”, the report states. It also wants an assessment of spending on advertisements that targeted the opposition.
