Congress leaders mum about government ad campaign companies

When the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 1999, its campaign managers claimed they did not know much about how to use money. Thus, the Election Commission would not be able to question their campaign expenses.

"We learnt most of our tricks from the Congress leaders," said late party leader Pramod Mahajan who was made election in charge by the party for highlighting the achievements of Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and the campaign was named as India Shining.

Though more than Rs 100 crore was spent on the project, the party showed only Rs 40 crore as spent on the project.

The question was asked in the both the houses of Parliament. "Majority of the work was done by the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity," Mahajan had admitted in an informal discussion with this correspondent.

Now, the focus is on the Congress party, which has formed a high level committee under the chairmanship of former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh Digvijay Singh.

While Mukul Wasnik has been designated as its convenor, another important member of the committee is none else than party general secretary Rahul Gandhi.

The party has nominated several top politicians to the committee including Veerapan Moily, former chief minister of Karnataka, to highlight significant achievements of the Manmohan Singh government.

"Unlike the BJP, we are not dream merchants who sell dreams to the people. We go with the common man," Tom Vadakkan told rediff.com.

The DAVP began making programmes on the prime minister's 15 point programme, debt wavier for the farmers as directed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the Rural Employment Scheme.

"We started working on the prime minister's 15 point programme in March last year. FM stations are also being used to highlight the achievements of Dr Singh's government," Vadakkan said.

When approached to give details of the number of advertising agencies which have been hired, Digvijay Singh shot back that Rediffusion is one of them.

Though the top party leadership is unwilling to give details to mediapersons and have been telling them that they were still looking for an advertising company for Congress, those who are in the know are aware that Tata's Good Relations and Dilip Cherrian's Perfect Relations figure amonst the list of 10 odd companies who have been called to submit their tenders.

"We have not asked for tenders from any company. If someone has filed papers, they have done so on their own," Moily told rediff.com in a conversation after a press meet.

However, Congress politicians were not keen to confirm or deny that Romesh Sharma's company is listed for the job.

A Congress leader with an Economics background has stakes in the company. Ipan of Rajiv Desai has got advertising campaigns for the party in the last few years and is the favourite to pick up some part of the project.

Congress leaders denied that they knew anything about a company called Ad-Campaign and that many Congress leaders have a stake in them.

"I have no idea about the company that you are mentioning. Maybe you have more information than me," said one of the sweet talkers of the party, who is presently looking after a state from the north-east.

This one issue which neither Dijvijay Singh, chairman of the advertising and visual publicity campaign, nor anyone including powerful general secretary Motilal Vohra are willing to utter, is that they have no idea whom Rahul Gandhi might favour.