Drive through almost any town in Madhya Pradesh and the state government is impossible to avoid. Hoardings at the chowk. Full pages in the morning paper. Sponsored posts around every government event. Chief Minister Mohan Yadav’s face is on most of them, and not only inside the state. Madhya Pradesh government advertisements have turned up at bus stops in Delhi and at the capital’s airport.
In 2023-24 and 2024-25, the two most recent years for which audited spending is available, Madhya Pradesh spent Rs 1,413.76 crore under the advertisement and publicity head alone. That works out to Rs 1.93 crore for every day of those two years. In both years, the government spent more on publicity than it had initially told the legislature it would.
