The Hindu: Chandigarh: Tuesday, December 15, 2015.
Opposition
Congress on Monday hit out at the Haryana government for spending nearly Rs.17
crore on the publicity blitzkrieg as part of its completion of one year in
office, claiming that the amount was spent on “non-existent achievements”.
Panipat-based
RTI activist P. P. Kapoor said that out of this amount, nearly Rs.6 crore was
spent on functions organised for Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and his
ministerial colleagues to publicise the BJP government’s achievements, another
Rs.4 crore on advertisements in various newspapers. Besides print media,
electronic media was given advertisement worth about Rs.4.30 crore, he told
reporters.
Stating that
he procured the documents through RTI, Mr. Kapoor further informed that about
Rs.25 lakh was spent on advertisements to various magazines. He added that the
money was spent during the period between October 21 and November 5.
The
first-ever BJP government in Haryana completed one year in office on October 26
this year.
Haryana
Congress president Ashok Tanwar termed the publicity spending revelations as
“unfortunate”.
“Spending
Rs.17 crore just on advertisements to tell people that we have completed one
year and to talk about non-existent achievements, is unfortunate. The BJP
government’s only achievement has been to take credit for the schemes and
projects initiated during the previous Congress government,” he said.
He said that
the BJP, which claims itself to be a party with a “difference”, should rather
have utilised this money for meeting their “unkept poll promises” including
giving unemployment allowance to the youth or giving Rs.2,000 per month as old
age pension to the beneficiaries rather than cheating them with meagre annual
raise.
“But to use
this money for some kind of false publicity, how can this be justified? We want
to ask the Chief Minister and his cabinet colleagues is this not a waste of
public money,” Mr. Tanwar asked. - PTI
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