ViewBag does not show messege in view

I created 2 div's inside a view.
to display content inside that i have used partial view and to show errors i am using Viewbag and displayed it as follows:

 <div id="tabs">
<ul>
    <li><a href="#tabs-1">Publish Exhibition</a></li>
    <li><a href="#tabs-2">Edit Existing Exhibition</a></li>
</ul>
<div id="tabs-1"  style=" width:900px; height:400px;">
<font color="red">@ViewBag.msg1</font>
    @{Html.RenderPartial("PubExhi", Model);}
</div>
<div id="tabs-2">
    @{Html.RenderPartial("EditExhi");}
</div>
</div>

I'm calling this view as

 ViewBag.msg1 = "record not updated!!!!";
   modelList = setIndex();
                                return View("Index", modelList);

evry thing is working fine except the viewbag
it is not displaying any msgs

When i debugged it, i can see the viewbag containing appropriate value
but it is not displaying on the page

I also tried to display it from the partial view but not getting any message

Can any body help me