YSR Congress party president and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy took up a dharna at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Wednesday, to highlight the alleged attacks on and killings of his party leaders and workers in the state in the last 40-day regime of the Telugu Desam Party-led National Democratic Alliance.
Jagan has clarified that he had taken up the dharna in New Delhi to bring the issue of lawlessness in Andhra Pradesh to the entire nation. So, he expects that his dharna would get wide coverage in the national media.
The responsibility of organising the national media coverage for the dharna lies on his party’s media managers. They were supposed to mobilise the reporters from various media houses to Jagan’s press conference at the dharna site.
Unfortunately, Jagan’s press conference hardly got any coverage in the national channels, contrary to his expectations. Most of those who came to the dharna site were reporters and camerapersons of vernacular media only, particularly Sakshi TV, NTV and TV9.
When Jagan was in power, information commissioner T Vijay Kumar Reddy and Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) headed by Rishi Raj Singh pampered national media with huge advertisements.
So, the party expected good coverage of Jagan’s dharna by the national media. One wonders what the media managers of the YSRCP were doing in New Delhi.
At the same time, Jagan also sent messages to his friends in other political parties to come to the dharna site and extend solidarity to him.
Except Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav and Indian Union Muslim League leader Abdul Wahab, no other party leader turned up.
Maybe, some more party leaders might come to meet Jagan by evening, sources said.