From 2019 to June 2022, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre spent Rs 911.17 crore on advertisements across print, television, and online media outlets.
Anurag Singh Thakur, Minister of Information and Broadcasting, supplied the information in response to a recent query posed by prominent Congressman Digvijaya Singh in the Rajya Sabha.
Singh had requested information on the number of publications, TV networks, and websites that had run advertisements for the federal government since 2019 as well as the total amount of money spent on such promotions.
Thakur said that the Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s Central Bureau of Communication has approved all government advertisements for publication in the media.
The data shows that from 2019 and June of this year, the government spent Rs 199.76 crore on TV commercials. Of this, 270 channels received Rs 98.69 crore between 2019 and 2020. The government provided 318 channels with Rs 69.81 crore between 2020 and 2021. Rs 29.30 crore was invested on 265 channels between 2021 and 2022. Rs 1.96 crore has been spent on advertisements across 99 channels in the current fiscal year.