The Delhi high court asked the Centre to furnish the details of the funds spent on the controversial India Shining campaign, and sought to know the guidelines under which the expenditure was incurred.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice B C Patel and Justice B D Ahmed, which is hearing two PILs on the issue, however, refused to direct the government to issue a White Paper on the advertisement campaign.

The high court notice might spell trouble for the government. According to officials, the government has used money from another campaign, meant to promote the country abroad, to fund the Indian Shining campaign.

As a result, several promotional measures that have been taken up abroad are now suddenly starved of funds, with the finance ministry in no position to replenish the head till a new government is elected.

This has happened because the India Shining campaign is not a planned one and as a result has never been discussed between the finance and other ministries.

When the campaign was conceptualised in January this year, the government had to almost suck dry the programme for "development assistance", budgeted at Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) under the department of economic affairs.

The expenditure Budget presented with the interim Budget for 2004-05 by Finance Minister Jaswant Singh says the Development Assistance is meant "to support an overall general and imaginative promition of India, its trade and foster techno-economic and intellectual cooperation with other countries".

The DEA has accordingly asked the expenditure department to consider a possible reallocation of funds to finance its commitment made to agencies abroad to promote India.