Odisha govt spent over Rs 86 crore for publicity of schemes

Bhubaneswar:  The Odisha government has spent over a whopping Rs 86 crore on the publicity of various government schemes in the last eight months, the Assembly was informed today.

In a reply to a question in the state Assembly, Information & Public Relations Minister  Raghunandan Das said the government has spent over Rs 86 core in telecast/broadcast of different developmental programmes from November 2018 to June 19, 2019.

During this period, Rs 60.19 crore was spent on electronic media (31 TV channels) whereas Rs 26.04 crore was paid to print media (89 newspapers), the Minister replied to a question posed by Congress MLA Tara Prasad Bahinipati.

According to sources, the state government has set a target of Rs 226.85 crore on publicity expenditure for the current financial year.

Earlier an RTI query had revealed that the state government spent over Rs 350 crore in the past eight years to promote its schemes, programmes and projects.