Lt Governor Anil Baijal has demanded the recovery of Rs. 97 crore which was splurged by the AAP party as the city government. On contrary to Supreme Court guidelines, the city government spent a massive amount on advertisements.
On top of this, Baijal also asked for an inquiry into the expenditures made on the advertisements. These fabricated advertisements which projected mainly Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal along with his party.
Answering this, AAP will have to compensate the money within the time period of one month. This move was brought into the limelight after three-member committee suggested that the AAP government was bringing the exchequer money into great misuse with the help of advertisements.
Out of the sum of Rs. 97 crores, the government paid the sum of Rs. 42 crore to ad agencies and for this LG instructed Chief Secretary M M Kutty to get the complete amount refunded from the AAP.
As per the directions made by LG, the remaining Rs. 55 crore will be paid by the Kejriwal government and would be provided by Aam Aadmi Party to all the ad agencies.
The three member committee, which was led by former Chief Election Commissioner B B Tandon was formed by the I & B ministry on the directions made by the Supreme Court. This was formed to address the issues regarding Content Regulation in Government Advertising.
A close source mentioned, “The Lt Governor has now directed the Chief Secretary to get the amount of Rs 97 crore from Aam Aadmi Party”.
In an early report of this month, the Comptroller and Auditor General figured out that they had put forward a huge amount of Rs. 29 crores in these advertisements. Apart from this, advertisements costing Rs. 24 crore, were in non-observance of financial propriety and regulations by the Supreme Court.
