Indian Government agencies have spent millions of dollars to promote the election campaign of Narendra Modi led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
According to Kashmir Media Service the scale of the CBC’s spending on government advertisements that appear to mimic the BJP’s campaign messages and that, according to critics, raise questions about the ability of non-partisan institutions to ensure a level playing field in the election.
The government’s communication agency spent nearly 387 million rupees ($4.65m) on Google advertisements in just under four months, from when it first started advertising regularly on the online platform in November, until March 15, when it last launched an advertisement. India’s national elections were formally announced on March 15. From that point on, government agencies are barred from any advertisements.
In fact, in these 113 days, the CBC was India’s largest spender on political advertisements on Google, while the BJP stood in second place with 314 million rupees ($3.7m). The CBC spending in this period was 41 percent more than the 275 million rupees ($3.3m) that the primary opposition Congress party had spent in almost six years– between June 2018 and March 15, 2024 – according to Google Ads Transparency data in this period.
And many of the CBC advertisements were part of the campaigns with slogans that independent election transparency activists and the opposition say were too close to the BJP’s promotional messages.
Opposition parties have long accused the BJP, under Modi, of turning supposedly neutral government agencies into extensions of their machinery – a charge the BJP has denied.
To Akshay Marathe, a spokesperson for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which rules in the capital New Delhi and is a part of the Congress-led opposition INDIA alliance, the controversial advertisement spending of the CBC is one with that pattern.
“Modi ensures that he and he alone will exercise any power in India,” Marathe said.
The CBC’s director-general, Dhirendra Ojha, and two additional director-generals, Rajesh Kumar Jha and Ajay Agrawal, for the allegations against the organization, on May 10. They have not responded
These advertisements were not from the BJP. They were paid for by the Indian taxpayer and were part of a campaign rolled out by the Indian government’s advertising agency, the Central Bureau of Communication (CBC). At least one other campaign, with multiple advertisements unveiled in March, also echoed the wording and look of the BJP’s election slogans.—KMS
