Whatever Telugu Desam Party president and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu says and does, it will be a big story for a section of media which has been supporting him for decades. And Naidu knows how to get into the headlines.
A day after enacting a big drama on the busy national highway in Vijayawada city for not being allowed by the police to flag off the bus yatra by Amaravati farmers, the TDP chief once again hit the streets with a begging bowl, collecting funds for the Save Amaravati Movement.
He had even given a call to the people to take to streets to safeguard the “People’s Capital.” Apparently, the response to this “begging” drama was very good and Naidu is understood to have collected a few lakhs of rupees in a span of an hour.
It is not exactly known whether there will be an account for such collections, but it served Naidu’s purpose – getting huge mileage in the pro-TDP media.
It was a banner story in Andhra Jyothy on Friday while Eenadu carried it as small story on the front page due to paucity of space.
Interestingly, both these pro-TDP dailies have been desperately trying to sell Amaravati as the best capital as it has all the necessary permanent infrastructure to run the administration.
For the last couple of days, Eenadu has been dedicating huge space for publishing the existing buildings in Amaravati stating that if the administrative capital is shifted from here to Visakhapatnam, all these buildings constructed with hundreds of crores of rupees would become redundant.
Starting from Friday, Andhra Jyothy, too, has begun publishing stories on the wastage of huge public money spent in the construction of several permanent buildings in Amaravati, if the capital is shifted from there.
Sakshi carried a counter report quoting minister Botsa Satyanarayana, stating that these pro-TDP media lacked the spirit of working for people’s welfare and questioning Naidu as to why he had described the buildings in Amaravati as temporary constructions.
The big story of the day, however, is the launch of Jagananna Amma Vodi scheme by chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy at Chittoor, where he described is a beginning to a new revolution in the field of education.
Eenadu, too, carried it as a banner story quoting Jagan as giving an assurance to the school-going children that he would take care of their welfare like a maternal uncle. Andhra Jyothy, too, carried it as a big story albeit in the bottom half of the front page, stating that Jagan is planning to revamp the education system from the grassroots.
Among the other stories that made it to the front page of the major dailies were: the chief minister’s direction to the irrigation department on completion of Rehabilitation and Resettlement of evacuees of Polavaram project by May, allotment of Krishna river water to Telangana and Andhra, personal appearance of Jagan Mohan Reddy in the CBI special court and Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu’s call for simultaneous elections in the state.