AAP Govt Allocates Rs 198 Crore For Publicity in Budget 2017-18

The Aam Aadmi Party government has set aside Rs 198 crore for publicity in the 2017-18 Budget.

The last year’s budgetary allocation under the head was Rs 207 crore, which has been revised to Rs 181 crore.

Ad budget has been a contentious area for the three-year-old Arvind Kejrwal government.

In its first Budget in 2015, it had earmarked Rs 526 crore for information and publicity, drawing severe criticism from several quarters, including opposition BJP and Congress.

However, the government had defended the allocation arguing the amount was “appearing” high as a separate head had been created for publicity and ads for the first time and allocations to several departments were combined under it.

Earlier, various departments used to separately allocate funds for advertisements, making an exact estimate of expenditure difficult.

The actual expenditure was also considerably less than what was earmarked.