Plea in Delhi HC to immediately stop airing of AAP govt's ads

An application was today filed in the Delhi high Court seeking an "immediate" stay on airing of AAP advertisements in other states apart from the national capital reportedly glorifying Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the party by "misusing public funds".
The plea was mentioned before the bench of justices B D Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva, which was allowed and listed for hearing tomorrow on the urgency ground that "public funds are getting depleted by passage of the day".
The bench, headed by Chief Justice G Rohini, had on July 15 directed the Centre to apprise it about the status of a three-member-body which was to be constituted by them as per the Government Advertisement (Content Regulation) Guidelines, 2014. The PIL is listed for hearing on July 27.

However, Congress leader Ajay Maken has, in his fresh plea, sought an interim direction restraining AAP government "from airing any advertisements in any outstation TV channel/ newspaper till the final disposal of the present matter".
The application was mentioned through advocate Aman Panwar and Mudit Gupta who told the bench that "apart from airing largescale advertisements in the newspapers of Delhi and the national television", the AAP government on July 20 "went to the extent of publishing advertisements in several towns and cities throughout India".
"In order to promote its political interests, the Delhi government is blatantly misappropriating public funds for publishing the advertisements in the regions which have no business, whatsoever with the policies and programmes of the Delhi," the application said.

Maken, chief of the party unit in Delhi, in his PIL before the Chief Justice has sought direction to restrain Delhi government from publishing the name of Kejriwal in any of its current or future advertisements that are allegedly in violation of the Advertisement Guidelines, 2014.
The plea for interim stay said that the advertisements in "Chennai, Kochi, Kolkatta etc. Can serve no public purpose to the people of Delhi and therefore such expensive advertisement campaigns by Respondent No.2 amounts to crude and shameless abuse of public funds for financing advertisements solely aimed at the political advancement of the ruling party".