It is still one and a half year to go for the general elections in the country as well as the assembly elections in Telugu states and it’s time for the media houses to make some big money.
In both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, most of the existing Telugu dailies have been toeing the line of the ruling parties – Telangana Rashtra Samithi and Telugu Desam Party respectively.
At least in AP, there is a scope for the opposition party YSR Congress to run a rival Telugu media house Sakshi, but in Telangana, almost all the major dailies have joined the TRS bandwagon.
And the news is that a couple of new Telugu dailies are going to make their presence felt in the Telugu states. In Andhra Pradesh, the most popular daily of yesteryears Andhra Patrika is being relaunched, while in Telangana, another new Telugu daily is coming up shortly.
According to sources, the main person behind the relaunch of Andhra Patrika are Deepa Venkat, daughter of Vice President of India M Venkaiah Naidu with the indirect support of power star and Jana Sena Party chief Pawan Kalyan.
Though the combination looks a little odd in view of Pawan’s revolt against the Bharatiya Janata Party, it is learnt Pawan had good relations with Deepa’s family and both of them had planned the revival of the old daily. It is not exactly known on what scale the paper is being brought out.
With regard to the Telangana daily, sources said it is being launched by contractor-turned-media entrepreneur C L Rajam, who had earlier burnt his hands with Namasthe Telangana Telugu daily and Metro India English daily.
He meekly surrendered to Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and gave up the Telugu daily, besides winding up the English daily with a hope that KCR would make him Rajya Sabha member.
After KCR ignored him, Rajam has decided to re-enter the media field with a Telugu daily. Sources said he has a partnership with former MP and Congress MLC Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy to launch the Telugu daily in a big way. The title and the day of launch are yet to be finalised, say sources.
