Finally, industrialist-turned-media house owner from Telangana C L Rajam was forced to lock out his English daily “Metro India” from Friday, ostensibly under pressure from the powers-that-be.
Rajam, who came to limelight by taking over the management of Namasthe Telangana, the first major Telangana daily in 2011, played a crucial role during the turbulent period of the Telangana movement and brought the demand for separate state to the fore strongly.
A couple of years after launching Namasthe Telangana, he launched Metro India to take the Telangana media power into the urban masses.
However, he had been under pressure ever since Telangana Rashtra Samithi came to power in the new state under the leadership of K Chandrasekhar Rao.
KCR forced him to handover Namasthe Telangana to his family, as he wanted to run it as an official paper of the TRS government.
Rajam had been left with only Metro India, which he started feeling a burden on him, as it did not serve any purpose, except giving personal publicity to him and his family.
One fine day in December 2014, Rajam announced closure of Metro India much to the shock of employees, but reopened it two days later obviously realising that it would drag him into legal problems. But it created a sort of insecurity among the employees, who started leaving the organisation one after the other in search of greener pastures.
He ran it for another 10 months with skeletal staff and minimum circulation just for the sake of his personal publicity. And finally, on Friday, he shut it down after forcing its remaining staff to resign.
Rajam apparently felt there was no point in running the daily at a time when KCR with mighty power and money bags is coming out his own English daily Telangana Today in a few weeks from now. Since he is a contractor, he did not want to rub KCR on the wrong shoulder.
So, it is better to do contracts and make some money, rather than on burning fingers in the media business!
