Opening another front in their long-running battle, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Delhi Lieutenant Governor (LG) Vinai Saxena are now at loggerheads over an agency being hired by Mr Saxena’s office at a cost of Rs 1.5 crore a year allegedly to “boost his image”.
Questioning why a person holding an “ornamental” post needed to burden taxpayers by issuing a tender to hire an agency to manage his social media presence and burnish his image, Delhi minister and senior AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj said, “Delhi has had many lieutenant governors, but we have never seen someone paying an agency Rs 1.5 crore a year to manage his social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram and X.”
Taking a dig at Mr Saxena, Mr Bharadwaj continued, “He has been active on social media for two years but he does not get any retweets. He is not liked by people so he is not popular. What is the point of doing this before the elections? The lieutenant governor’s post is an ornamental one. He is supposed to stay within his boundaries and work, but he is doing this before the elections to use his office for political reasons.”
Assembly elections in Delhi are expected to be held before February next year.
While there has been no direct response from Mr Saxena, sources from his office rubbished Mr Bharadwaj’s remarks and said there was nothing wrong with hiring an agency to handle the lieutenant governor’s social media presence. They also reiterated that the AAP has allegedly spent Rs 3,000 crore on advertising and asked how the party could even make a statement like this.
“We don’t even know if the money spent by the party has come from foreign sources or taxpayers. What is wrong with what the lieutenant governor has done? We don’t see anything wrong with it. The AAP is the last party that should talk about spending money on social media or advertising,” said a source.
The latest showdown comes barely a week after the AAP had claimed that there is a nearly 30% shortage of doctors and specialists at several hospitals in Delhi and accused Lieutenant Governor Saxena of inaction.
The statement had been made by Mr Bharadwaj, who holds the health portfolio among others, and the LG Secretariat had hit back and accused him of failing miserably in handling the departments under him.
“He now seems to have got a fresh brief of retaining his ministerial position by pointlessly abusing the LG – without any basis – daily,” it had said.