New Delhi: A right to information reply has revealed that the Centre has spent about Rs 2,586 crore in advertisements promoting Prime Minister Narendra Modi between 2020 and 2026.
To put the amount into perspective, the total amount spent wasn’t just a few hundred crore – it was Rs 25,86,00,00,000, and Indian taxpayers paid for it, according to Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Saket Gokhale, who filed the RTI.
Gokhale had applied for an RTI on June 1 asking for disclosure of the amount spent by the Union government on advertisements across all platforms, including digital, social media, TV, radio, print and hoardings promoting Modi. The Central Bureau of Communication (CBC), under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, released data on June 16, breaking down the expenditures by the financial year starting from 2020.
The agencies that received the amount, however, remained undisclosed, Gokhale said.
The breakdown
The massive figure might be too “shocking to digest,” Gokhale said, since in print media alone, the party spent nearly Rs 338 crore in 2025-26. According to the data released, the amount is four times more than the previous year’s expenditure of Rs 83.16 crore.
In total, the print advertisement’s expenditures reached around Rs 796 crore between 2020 and 2026.
Approximately Rs 936 crore were spent on radio and television advertisements from 2020-2021 to the current financial year.
The amount spent on hoarding or outdoor advertisements was Rs 583.97 crore between 2020 and 2026.
The rise in outdoor advertisements is stark when comparing the data. The lowest amount, Rs 32.76, was spent in 2022-23, the year before the general elections, and in 2023-24, the government spent Rs 162.21.
With just six months into the 2026-27 financial year, the expenditure on advertisements has already reached 2.76 crore.
New media
There has been a significant acceleration, as Gokhale said, in the “public money” spent on promoting the Prime Minister. In new media – consisting of digital and social media – the government went from spending Rs 14 crore in 2020-21 to Rs 131.35 crore in 2025-26, a nearly tenfold increase.
The CBC refused to disclose which agencies received the Rs 2,586 crore citing “commercial confidence,” Gokhale said, adding that this is what should worry every taxpayer.
“This is ONLY ONE AGENCY. It excludes other ministries, PSUs (Public Sector Undertakings) and party ads. The real figure is far higher,” he said.
Taking a dig at the government, the TMC Rajya Sabha MP said that the Centre will spend “thousands of crores of public money on Modi’s PR but will HIDE who received the money.”
He claimed that Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah control the media using government advertising. “When the reward for promoting Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is Rs 2,586 cr, are you surprised that our media is supremely compromised?” Gokhale questioned.
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