One does not know how long Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy would continue in his post, but he has certainly realized that lack of adequate publicity for his government programmes and his poor interaction with the media were the major factors for the poor performance of the Congress party in the elections.

So, he has decided to step up the publicity for his government and woo the journalists so that there would be maximum mileage to the Congress party before the next general elections.

For the first time, Kiran held a detailed review of the Information and Public Relations department on Tuesday and announced release of huge funds to the department, so that it would take the massive publicity blitzkrieg in the coming days.

According to an official release, Kiran directed the Finance Department to release Rs 1 crore immediately towards the corpus fund of Journalists Welfare Fund, apart from the existing amount of Rs 1.05 crore. He also directed increase of government share towards health insurance for journalists from Rs Rs.234.90 lakhs (covering 11,985 journalists) to Rs.254.80 lakhs during 2012-13 to cover 13,000 journalists.

The Chief Minister agreed to the proposal of routing all advertisements of various departments through I&PR. He approved the proposal to modernise the public address system with latest technologies in all the districts in a phased manner and also provide vehicles to the DPROs in all districts.

The Chief Minister advised the officials of the department to go in for massive campaigns though Radio and Cable channels against all social evils like illiteracy, Health issues and campaign against consumption of liquor etc. He said success stories of various government programmes should be highlighted. The Chief Minister suggested that messages about all the government flagship programmes and its success should be taken to people and I&PR has the biggest role in this.