Saket Gokhale, an RTI activist who recently joined Trinamul Congress, filed an RTI with the UP government.

Gokhale asked the following questions: (a) If the fake advertisement yesterday was made by the UP government or The Indian Express b) Who approved the advertisement from Ajay Bisht’s team c) Copy of contract with The Indian Express specifying who’s in charge of what. He also stated, “we need to stand up if media being bullied by Bisht.”

TMC Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Shekhar Roy today said, “both the national daily and the BJP leaders of UP are not stating the fact.” He said there is a code of standards for government advertisements including those of newspapers where the advertisement is given.

Roy said, “Indian News Paper Society also has its specific code for advertisement.” Roy also quoted from the clauses of the advertisement of that national daily where the advertisement appeared yesterday.

He said, “It is not only unethical but absolutely unlawful.” Roy said they wanted to know if the national daily was coerced to bear the onus of the error. ‘Ajay Bisht’s government uses pictures of Kolkata infrastructures and Narendra Modiji is clearly losing the game,” said Trinamul Congress Rajya Sabha MP and party’s national spokesperson, Derek O’Brien.

“We here give some examples for UP chief minister so that he can bring out second and third advertisements using West Bengal’s progress,” he said. He also cited various sectors in which Bengal has excelled like Kolkata has been ranked as the “safest” city, chief minister Mamata Banerjee built 51,000km rural roads whereas in UP only 1,680km were built.

Miss Banerjee spent Rs2,058 crore for rural roads while in UP only Rs950 crore was spent and a crime against SC is 0.3 per cent whereas in UP is 25 per cent, he added. TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, stated, “transforming UP for Yogi Adityanath (Ajay Bisht) means stealing images from infrastructure is seen in Bengal under Mamata Banerjee’s leadership.”

“Looks like the ‘double engine model’ has miserably failed in BJP’s strongest state.”