Congress targets AAP government on ‘misleading and false’ ads

The Congress, on Wednesday, said it will run a signature campaign demanding recovery of nearly Rs 854 crore from the ruling AAP for putting out “false and misleading” advertisements in national media outside Delhi.

Addressing a conference, Delhi Congress unit president Ajay Maken said party activists will collect 8 lakh 54 thousand signatur-es from the people across Delhi on October 8 and 9 and submit them to L-G Najeeb Jung to press for its demand.

Referring to a public interest litigation that he had filed, Mr Maken said the Supreme Court-appointed B.B. Tandon Committee, in its report, held the AAP government “guilty of spending crores of rupees” on advertisements, and that Rs 284 crore, as per the directorate of advertising and visual publicity (DAVP) rates, be collected from the party.

He said that according to the DAVP rates, the advertisement amount works out to around Rs 284 crore whereas the AAP should be charged on commercial rates as the advertisements were published for the publicity of a political party, which is three times more than the DAVP rates, and works out to Rs 854 crore.