Information dept to anchor all govt ads

Will prevent releasing of same advertisements by other departments

 The State Cabinet on Friday approved the Advertisement Policy 2013 which envisages carrying out a planned and effective publicity activities for the State government.

As per the policy, all the departments of the government have to release their advertisements to the media through the Information department. This will not only prevent various departments and agencies releasing the same advertisement.

Hitherto, various departments, boards and corporations are releasing advertisements directly to the media, leading to haphazard and unplanned communication. Lack of coordination among different departments in publicising the government schemes sometimes led to contradictory views.

The new policy will prevent such embarrassments to the government, officials said. Under the previous system, the government was not able to ascertain the actual money spent on advertisements in a year. And there was no proper rates fixed for advertisements to electronic media. The policy has made a provision to fix proper rates.

Moreover, there were about 20 different government orders and 35 guidelines issued over the last four decades pertaining to government advertisements. All these orders will be codified and a single, comprehensive guideline will be laid down under the policy, officials said.

A State-level committee headed by the Additional Chief Secretary and comprising heads of major departments will be set up to ensure proper coordination. Besides, there will be a State-level media verification committee and district-level media committee.

The policy has classified the media as newspaper and electronic. State-level, regional-level, district-level and special category (special media) come under newspaper category and Radio, TV, cyber and online papers come under electronic media category.

Advertisement tariffs will be fixed based on size and circulation of each newspaper.