For the last one week, anti-establishment media has been dishing out a series of stories on how Amaravati had been well-established as the capital of Andhra Pradesh in the last four years, how several buildings have come up, how administration has been running from there and how the land values in the area have gone up.
It started with Eenadu which has been publishing stories of colourful pictures of constructions that came up in Amaravati and within a couple of days, Andhra Jyothy picked up from there and carried a series of stories how all these high rise buildings constructed at huge cost would be abandoned once the capital is shifted to Visakhapatnam.
Apparently, YSR Congress party and its official mouthpiece Sakshi has realised that these reports in the rival media could damage the party’s image in the public and might create apprehensions among the people on the proposed capital shift plan of chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy.
There are also reports that Jagan had pulled up the Sakshi team for not being able to counter the stories of the rival papers. So, for the last couple of days, Sakshi, too, has started publishing stories against Amaravati.
On Monday, it has carried a banner story to project how Amaravati is prone to serious floods and in a worst-case scenario, 75 per cent of the capital region would get inundated in water.
As usual, both the anti-establishment dailies have continued to publish stories on the ongoing agitation by Amaravati farmers.
On Monday, the lead stories in Andhra Jyothy and Eenadu were on the visit of National Women’s Commission to enquire into the alleged highhanded behaviour of the police towards agitating womenfolk in Amaravati.
Both the dailies, however, carried the same report expressing dissatisfaction over the way the women’s commission conducted its hearing and how the affected women were not given a chance to present their woes before the members.
On the other hand, Sakshi carried a small counter report stating that the women constables had lodged a complaint with the women’s commission stating that they were beaten up by the agitators and not the other way.
The alleged attacks by the YSR Congress party workers on the Jana Sena Party activists at Kakinada at the behest of local MLA Dwarampudi Chandrasekhar Reddy also made it to the headlines in Eenadu and Andhra Jyothy. Sakshi has completely ignored the same, at least on the front page.
Another interesting news that attracts the readers in all the three major Telugu dailies is the scheduled meeting of YSRC president and chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy with his Andhra Pradesh counterpart K Chandrasekhar Rao at the latter’s camp office Pragati Bhavan in Hyderabad.
What the two chief ministers are going to talk at the meeting being held after a gap of nearly four months, is a matter of curiosity even for the national media.
The resignation of Tollywood villain-comedian Prithvi Raj from the post of Sri Venkateshwara Bhakthi Channel (SVBC) following the exposure of his alleged sexist conversation with one of the channel employees, is yet another news that attracted the readers of Eenadu and Andhra Jyothy. As expected, Sakshi ignored it.