With just three days left for the elections to the Telangana assembly, popular television channel TV9 sought to provoke the Congress party by airing a pre-election survey on Monday night and demoralise the party by spreading serious charges against Pradesh Congress Committee president Capt N Uttam Kumar Reddy.
Though the Election Commission initially banned airing of all surveys by the media houses till December 11, it has somehow relaxed the rule for reasons only to it.
As a result, all sorts of surveys are being projected in different sections of media, some in favour of the TRS and others in favour of Maha Kootami.
According to the survey telecast by TV9 which attributed it to Center for Psephological Studies (CPS), TRS will get 94 to 104 seats in the 119-member assembly, while Maha Kootami will get 16-21 seats.
While the figures projected in the survey are totally debatable, what the channel did to spice up the programme was to call Uttam on line and ask his opinion.
Naturally, Uttam fretted and fumed at the channel and CPS which did the survey. He said TV9 was sold out to the ruling TRS and had become worse than T News, the official news channel of the TRS.
He alleged that the channels were bribed by the TRS. He even challenged whether TV9 will down its shutters, if the TRS does not get 94 seats.
Within minutes, the channel people circulated the clippings of Uttam’s comments in the social media widely, stating that Uttam had called up TV9 channel and threatened it for airing the survey. The fact is that TV9 itself called the PCC chief to ask his opinion.
“It is nothing but natural on the part of Uttam to fire at the channel, which telecast the survey predicting such a low figure for the Congress. But TV9 is trying send a wrong message to the people saying Uttam was threatening the channel,” a source said.