State spent Rs 350cr for publicity in 8 yrs

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Bhubaneswar: An RTI query revealed that the state government spent over Rs 350 crore in the past eight years to promote its schemes, programmes and projects.
According to the RTI reply, the government utilised taxpayers’ ‘hard earned money’ worth Rs 350.34 crore since December 1, 2010 for publicity, including advertisements in electronic and print media as well as outdoor
advertisements.
While `313.74 crore was spent on advertising in print media, `21.95 crore was for publicity in electronic media and `14.64 crore on outdoor hoardings.
According to sources, the state government has set a target of `226.85 crore on publicity expenditure for the current financial year.
Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and ruling BJD trained guns at each other over the utilisation of public money for publicity, whereas the Congress slammed both the BJD and BJP for wasting crores of rupees for their image-building.
State BJP vice-president Samir Mohanty asked, “If the BJD has brand Naveen then why it has to spend so much on publicity?”
BJD spokesperson Sasmit Patra replied, “The BJP should feel ashamed instead for blaming the state government. They have spent over `4,500 crore in past four years on publicity.”