India Shining, at what cost: HC

‘‘Let us first know the figures,’’ the court observed, adjourning the hearing to March 10. It also took note of the fact that the Election Commission has already banned the ‘‘India Shining/ Bharat Uday’’ campaigns.

The PILs, which first came up for hearing last Wednesday, were filed by the Unemployed Youth Unity Movement and advocate Chanchal Thakur, who alleged that the campaign used public funds to ‘‘laud the working of a particular party and its leader’’ just ahead of elections.

The Centre’s counsel, Sanjay Jain, asserted that a democratically elected government had every right to inform people about its policies, programmes and achievements. Many governments in the past had done this, he said, adding ‘‘this is followed even in the US and Britain.’’

Union Law Minister Arun Jaitley said the funds for the India Shining campaign were sanctioned in the 2003-04 budget and the figure of Rs 700 crore being cited as campaign cost is ‘‘exaggerated’’. ‘‘In the last Budget, Rs 100 crore was sanctioned for the India Shining campaign and till about two weeks back, we had spent Rs 48 crore out of that,’’ he said. The court said the moot question was whether so much money could be spent like this.

On the petitioners’ allegation that most of the claims made in the ‘‘India Shining’’ campaign were false, the court said this was a question of perception. ‘‘It is not that we have not made progress. India has progressed in various fields since independence. When we became independent how many people had bungalows? Now you see lot of bungalows, cars and other things. Today even an ordinary citizen moves with a mobile phone…we have to make further efforts… the problem is about who should take the credit,’’ it said.