UIDAI spent Rs 9 cr on ads in 4 months

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) spent Rs 9.42 crore on advertisements in four months, including on publicity about linking Aadhaar with LPG for availing Direct Benefit Transfer, through a private agency.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has now found fault for not choosing Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) to route UIDAI’s publicity material to the media.

The Authority and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, however, believe the government agency is not competent enough. The auditor has criticised the UIDAI for causing a loss of Rs 1.42 crore.

When CAG sought the Ministry’s response to its finding, the latter was very critical of DAVP and endorsed UIDAI’s views on DAVP.

The UIDAI chose a private agency as “there has been little contribution from DAVP in terms of assessment of communication needs, insufficient creative inputs in terms of designing, development of content and messages, lack of planning etc,” the ministry told the CAG as it endorsed the UIDAI view. The auditor, however, did not buy this argument.

According to the CAG report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, Rs 9.42 crore was spent between December 2014 and March 2015.

Of this, Rs 5.73 crore was spent between December 2014 and March 2015 on the campaign to inform people about the benefit of linking Aadhaar with LPG database for Direct Benefit Transfer.

For the campaign to educate residents on the mode of retrieving Aadhaar if one loses the number, Rs 3.69 crore was spent in March 2015 alone.