It is a known fact that senior IAS officer Satish Chandra was considered Man Friday of Telugu Desam Party president and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.
Soon after Naidu came to power in 2014, he brought Satish Chandra from Delhi and made him his principal secretary in the chief minister’s office.
He was all powerful officer and there was a talk that on many occasions, he had even overruled the chief secretaries during the TDP regime.
In a way, Satish Chandra was a right hand of Chandrababu Naidu just like present principal secretary Praveen Prakash is for chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy now. Not a single file used to move without the approval of Satish Chandra.
After Jagan came to power, Satish Chandra was naturally sidelined completely but within no time, he managed to get closer to Jagan and bag a plum post as Special Chief Secretary of the higher education department.
Yet, Satish Chandra could not get rid of the stigma of being a loyal officer of Naidu during the TDP regime.
However, he sprang a surprise by filing a complaint with the police three days ago against popular Telugu television channel TV5, known for its blatant pro-TDP stand and a case was registered by the police under various sections of Indian Penal Code including: 380 (theft), 468 (forgery), 469 (forgery to damage reputation), 471 (fraud by forgery) and 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy) apart from 66 (b) of Information Technology Act.
While an advocate Sravan was the prime accused in the case, Satish Chandra named TV5 anchor Murthy as A-2 and chairman B R Naidu as A-3, besides others.
It is learnt the channel had telecast a report on the appointment of governing councils for various universities alleging that the YSR Congress party government was filling up only party leaders and other cronies as the members of the governing councils.
In this connection, the channel reportedly telecast the clipping of a note file purportedly written by Satish Chandra approving the names recommended by the YSRC leaders.
The IAS officer got angry for disclosing the note file, which would have been either stolen from his office or copied or forged.
Since TV5 is a pro-TDP channel and Satish Chandra was known to be Naidu’s man, this case kicked up an interesting debate in the media and political circles.
It remains to be seen how the case is taken forward!