NGO files plea in HC against AAP ad campaign, says party in violation of SC guidelines

New Delhi: A plea was filed on Monday in the Delhi High Court seeking directions against the AAP government for Supreme Court guidelines violation by bringing out advertisements “glorifying” Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the party while demonising the opposition. The plea, filed by NGO Nyaya Path, further sought direction to the Delhi government to “immediately withdraw the recent television advertisement and to restrain itself from such type of image building exercise of Arvind Kejriwal”. [caption id=“attachment_2303898” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Screengrab from AAP’s TV ad.[/caption] The Kejriwal government on 12 July issued an advertisement with the tagline ‘Wo pareshan karte rahein, hum kaam karte rahein’ (they troubled us but we continued with our work). Referring to the recent advertisement which was published from Mumbai, the petitioner sought direction to the Centre, LG and Delhi government that cost of advertisement be recovered from the individual (Kejriwal), who was being glorified by such advertisement. “Delhi government has launched a television advertisement which is being telecast in almost all major media channels. It is pertinent to mention that the advertisement glorifies Kejriwal while demonising other people, which obviously refers to the Opposition party in Delhi. “The advertisement is being aired all over the country at the expense of tax payers of Delhi. The advertisement is also in contravention of ratio as laid down by the Supreme Court in judgement dated 13 May, 2015…,” the plea said. The Delhi government was advertising in Mumbai newspapers, which clearly was not the information for the intended people, it said. The Supreme Court on 13 May, in a historic judgment, held that taxpayers’ money cannot be spent to build “personality cults” of political leaders and restrained ruling parties from publishing photographs of political leaders or prominent persons in government-funded advertisements. The apex court had said such photos divert attention from the policy of the government, unnecessarily associate an individual with a government project and pave the way for cultivating a “personality cult”. PTI