Mr Ravishankar Prasad noted that Mrs Gandhi was earlier chairperson of the National Advisory Council (NAC), which was a governmental position, but she subsequently stepped down from that in the wake of the office-of-profit row. At present she does not hold any government office, he pointed out, therefore there was no justification for her being featured in government advertisements.
The BJP leader said her photographs were appearing on an almost daily basis not only in advertisements released by the Union and some (Congress-led) state governments, but also in those of public sector undertakings. The Congress president was thus getting “free and privileged publicity at the cost of crores of rupees from the public exchequer,” he said.
“Though Dr Manmohan Singh was nominated Prime Minister by Mrs Sonia Gandhi, we hope appropriate direction would be given by him to stop this palpably illegal and unjustified practice,” he said. The BJP leader demanded that the Prime Minister’s Office instruct all ministries, departments and PSUs to put an immediate end to “this corrupt and unjustifiable practice.” A directive to this effect must go out immediately, he added, so that when the government completes four years on May 22 Mrs Sonia Gandhi is not projected in the publicity blitz.