Close to Rs 8,000 crore from Swachh Bharat funds spent on 'personal PR' for PM Modi: TMC's Saket Gokhale

New Delhi: Trinamool Congress MP Saket Gokhale on Thursday alleged the Union government has spent close to Rs 8,000 crore from the Swachh Bharat funds on "personal PR" for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In a post on X, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP said almost every program of the government of India is "solely dedicated towards promoting Modi". 

"Modi Govt spent close to approx Rs 8000 crores ($950 million) from Swacch Bharat funds purely on Modi's personal PR. Yesterday, Modi "celebrated" 10 years of the Swacch Bharat campaign on Gandhi Jayanti. But what has this campaign achieved?" Gokhale said.

"This is the reality - Between 2014 till date, Modi has spent close to Rs. 8000 crores from the budget of Swacch Bharat on advertisements, PR campaigns, hoardings, and other publicity material. Almost every ad/ hoarding of Swacch Bharat has a big photo of Modi and all videos glorify his persona," he said.

"The personal PR of Modi through this campaign has been such that, after demonetization, Modi insisted on putting the Swacch Bharat branding even on India's new currency notes." Gokhale said almost every program of the Union government has been "dedicated towards promoting Modi" and added the amount spent on advertisements is "mind-boggling".  "This is just one campaign. Almost every program of Govt of India is solely dedicated towards promoting Modi. Assume 50 govt programs/schemes and the amount spent only on ads and PR for Modi is mind-boggling. These are taxpayer funds purely being spent on propaganda of Modi & BJP," he said. 

"No other party or leader in India has access to lakhs of crores of Govt funds for their personal PR the way Modi does. Modi Govt loots & bleeds people through increasing taxes on almost everything. And then, your hard-earned money extorted as taxes is spent on Modi's PR where even vaccine certificates have his photo on them," the TMC MP said.

"Why should ordinary Indians bleed themselves so that the govt can spend lakhs of crores on the PR of a man like Modi who couldn't even get a majority in Parliament? Why must taxes of people be used on personal promotion of Modi - a man who majority of Indians didn't even vote for & reduced his party to 240 seats?" he added. 

Prime Minister Modi on Tuesday participated in Swachh Bharat Diwas 2024 during which he inaugurated projects worth around Rs 10,000 crore under the Swachh Bharat and AMRUT 2.0 missions which include water and sewage treatment plants across several states.