This is the question everybody has been asking for the last 24 hours.
The so-called “sensational” news reported by international news agency Reuters on Wednesday about South Korean automobile giant Kia Motors is planning to wind up its first car plant in India in Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh and negotiating with Tamil Nadu to shift its plant there turned out to be hoax within 24 hours.
While Andhra Pradesh government, Tamil Nadu government and Kia Motors India management strongly refuted the reports stating that there are no plans whatsoever to shift the plant from Anantapur to anywhere in India, the correspondents of news agency Reuters remained tight lipped, without even defending themselves.
It clearly showed that the report on Kia was a planted one. Now, the question is who could have planted this story.
According to some sections in the government, it could be a deliberate plant by Kia Motors management itself as a sort of blackmailing tactics, in order to bring pressure on the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government.
There were reports that the government was planning to withdraw certain concessions given by the previous TDP government to Kia for its expansion plans. May be, the report was planted to force the new government to continue the same.
There are also reports that it could be the plant by the Telugu Desam Party to malign the image of the YSRC government and project it as a villain for industrial investments.
Social media reports indicated that Thomson Reuters, the parent organisation of Reuters news agency, had signed an agreement with the state government during the Naidu regime for setting up its unit here.
Naidu enjoys good relations with Reuters management and there is every reason to believe that the TDP might have got the story planted through this news agency about Kia’s possible shift to Tamil Nadu.
In any case, the Kia Motors episode gave the much-needed fodder for the Telugu media, which has been getting monotonous with the repeated coverage of Amaravati farmers’ agitation for the last two months.
Both Eenadu and Andhra Jyothy gave a common headline: “Kia Kalakalam” but the coverage was huge in Eenadu which made it as a banner story. While giving both the versions of the government and Kia management, Eenadu report also raised several doubts over Kia’s plans.
Expectedly, it also gave a big coverage to Naidu’s press conference, in which he alleged that the YSRC leaders were intimidating Kia management.
Sakshi also carried the Kia story as a banner, but it was a sort of strong rebuttal to Reuters story. It suspected a big conspiracy behind the planting of the news story.
Amidst this “masala” news, there is also another news that got prominence in all the three dailies – it is about Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank which agreed in principle the proposal of the state government to borrow Rs 21,000 crore loan from the bank for various infrastructure projects.
Similarly, Jagan’s review meeting on Rythu Bharosa scheme, in which he said the government itself would purchase the food grains if the Centre did not give enough support price.
Besides, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pot shots at Rahul Gandhi and his aggressive speech in Rajya Sabha holding first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru responsible for the partition of India also figured prominently in the Telugu media.
