Accusing the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) of spending Rs. 630 crore from the exchequer on publicity ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday urged the Election Commission (EC) to stop the use of public money for advertisements.
The former BJP national president M. Venkaiah Naidu told presspersons: “We urge the EC to stop the advertisements issued by the Union government on the eve of elections.” He said this at the party’s programme where tea was distributed to the public in Gandhinagar here, as a symbolic attempt to hit out at the Congress for ridiculing BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi for working in a tea shop before entering politics.
Pointing out that speculation was rife about the poll notification being issued in the last week of February, he wondered how a government could spend huge sums of money on publicity at this juncture. The BJP will take up the issue, more so as Chief Election Commissioner V.S. Sampath had recently said the commission would not allow advertisements at the cost of public money before the polls.
“Why is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi being left out of the publicity campaign of the Congress, which is projecting only Rahul Gandhi,” Mr. Naidu wondered. Seeking to downplay the possibility of a Third Front force emerging, Mr. Naidu said: “Four different political fronts are competing with each other to get the space of the Third Front. All the leaders have their own fronts. Mulayam Singh Yadav wants to lead a third front, while Mamata Banerjee wants to lead a federal front. Nitish Kumar and Jayalalithaa want to lead different fronts.”
