The information and public relations department of Andhra Pradesh government, which is supposed to enhance the prestige of the state government, had been in the news for wrong reasons several times in the past.
And on Wednesday, it was once again in the news for yet another bloomer.
With the elections to gram panchayat elections round the corner, the Jagan Mohan Reddy government in the state is making all out efforts to encourage unanimous elections in as many gram panchayats as possible in order to avoid clashes at the village level and ensure formation of elected bodies peacefully.
As part of that the government decided to enhance the cash incentive being given to the unanimously elected gram panchayats ranging from Rs 5 lakh for those with less than 2,000 population, up to Rs 20 lakh for those having more than 10,000 population.
So far so good. The government wanted to extensively publicise this decision so that there would be maximum number of unanimously elected gram panchayats.
To this effect, the government gave full-page advertisements in various newspapers, obviously through Information and Public Relations Department.
While the text of the advertisement was absolutely fine, reflecting the government’s intentions. But what caught the attention of the netizens and the opposition parties was the picture of the gram panchayat building used by the department in the advertisement.
The picture used to represent the gram panchayat building was that of Telangana government. The official emblem of the Telangana government on the building is clearly visible in the picture.
Naturally, netizens, obviously those supporting the Telugu Desam Party, have made the advertisement viral in the social media, criticising the Jagan government.
TDP senior legislator Gorantla Buchaiah Chowdary, while pulling up the government for announcing cash incentives for the unanimously-elected gram panchayats, wondered why the government used the picture of a Telangana gram panchayat.
“While spending crores of rupees on advertisements, how can you overlook such blunders? Please correct the mistake,” he suggested.
BJP spokesperson Sadhineni Yamini, who was also in the TDP till recently, ridiculed the Jagan government for borrowing pictures of gram panchayat buildings from the neighbouring Telangana state.
“What is ironical is that the advertisement with wrong picture was published even in the official paper of YSRC,” she criticised.
