The Arvind Kejriwal-led-Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government has spent a whopping ₹1585.87 crores on advertising since it came to power in Delhi in 2015.
The revelation was made through two Right to Information (RTI) replies obtained by activist Vivek Pandey, one of which has been exclusively accessed by OpIndia.
In his tweet, Vivek Pandey shared how the total advertisement expenditure has grown by 408% in last 5 years under AAP government.
Pandey had sought information from the Directorate of Information and Publicity about the expenditure of the Delhi government on advertising since 2020.
In an RTI reply obtained by the activist on Thursday (25th April), the Directorate of Information and Publicity informed that the AAP government spent ₹293.20 crores in the Financial Year 2020-2021, ₹568.39 crores in the Financial Year 2021-2022, ₹186.28 crores in Financial Year 2022-2023 and ₹26.23 crores in the Financial Year 2023-2024.
The advertisements, borne on taxpayer’s money, were displayed across various forms of media such as electronic and print. OpIndia accessed another RTI, filed by activist Vivek Pandey in November 2020.
The RTI reply provided year-wise expenditure on advertising by the Delhi government since 2012-2013. Given that Arvind Kejriwal formed his government in February 2015, we took into account the money spent on advertising since the Financial Year 2015-2016.
According to the RTI, the Arvind Kejriwal-led-government spent ₹81.23 crores (FY2015-2016), ₹67.25 crores (FY2016-2017), ₹117.76 crores (FY2017-2018), ₹45.54 crores (FY2018-2019) and ₹199.99 crores (FY2019-2020) on advertising.
It implies that the Delhi government spent a total of ₹311.78 crores on ads between 2015 and 2019. If we compare both the RTI replies and add the expenditure incurred on ads, it turns out that the Kejriwal government spent ₹1274.09 crores in the past 5 years (2019-2024).
The amount stands at a staggering ₹1585.87 crores if we account for the last 9 years of the AAP government in Delhi. As evident from the RTI replies, spending on ads increased tremendously since 2019.
When OpIndia compared the ad expenditure of AAP between 2019-2024 (last 5 years) and 2015-2019 (previous 4 years), we found an increase of 408.65% in spending.