The hollowness of the claim of Arvind Kejriwal for running a clean and transparent government got exposed, when RTI activist Anil Galgali sought information by filing an RTI query with the Information and Broadcasting Ministry of the Delhi government, about the expenses incurred on the government advertisement. Instead of providing information the Delhi government has replied that since the information sought is not available as it has not been compiled, hence the information seeker can personally visit the office of the Information and Broadcasting ministry and inspect the files.
Following the series of the advertorials in almost all the dailies in the Mumbai city in the month of February, Anil Galgali had filed an RTI with Delhi government seeking details of expenditure incurred on advertisements on 8 March 2016. After Galgali filed query, his application was forwarded by Rajeev Kumar, Dy Director of Directorate of Information and Publicity to three departments ie Shabdarth, Advt and Field Publicity. Interestingly none of the three departments responded to his request.
Replying to Galgali’s query on March 17, 2016, Directorate of Information and Publicity of Delhi Government MC Mourya said that applicant may be requested to inspect the information available on the records in the files of the FP (field Publicity) unit, so that the desired information can be provided on the payment of prescribed fee.
While Shabdarth department, a new department on April 4, 2016 replied that Shabdarth issues the advertisements on the basis of order given by the Directorate of Information and Publicity Department and further said that information asked was not related with this department.
Finally, on April 13, 2016, Directorate of Information and Publicity Department’s Advertise Section Public Information Officer Nalin Chouhan replied to the Galgali query saying that desired information asked by the applicant was not available with the office, however, applicant can personally inspect the documents.
Galgali said, “The motive of this government is very much clear that it does not wish to share the common tax payers money spent on advertisement.”
