It was way back when YS Jagan Mohan Reddy made allegations that turned the heads of many, claiming that the TDP government had given away hundreds of crores of rupees to Andhra Jyothy and other allied media houses in the name of advertisements, which is a gross misuse of public money.
However, after assuming power, he never raised that point again to expose the misdeeds of Chandrababu Naidu and how he distributed public money to his allied media people. Why so? Maybe he was carried away with other priorities. But that is not what the public expect.
Now, Revanth Reddy is also doing a similar thing, stating that KCR looted public money and siphoned it to Namaste Telangana and other own media houses when he was in power in the last ten years. But why is he stopping at the allegations instead of proving it in front of the public and taking necessary legal action?
Dropping big allegations and not following up with action is not something that people expect. For every allegation or exposure, there should be a conclusion and poetic justice.
In the first place, the I&PR department should be scrutinized. Why can't it release the statement of account of how much amount each media house was given? There are many allegations that some media houses, dailies with nothing in terms of circulation and reach, were also given crores of rupees as advertisements.
This gross misuse should not be stopped at questioning and raising the point, but there should be follow-up action and necessary legal steps.
There are a lot of things to be streamlined by Revanth Reddy in his new government. The tariffs of ads should be revised. The reach and circulation of different channels and dailies should be identified through a neutral survey, like that of ABC or IRS. The BARC ratings are available for all TV channels anyway.
So, based on that, if every invoice and payment are unearthed, thousands of crores of scams that happened over years will come out. That list should be published. The list of many benami media houses, their real owners who worked on behalf of the ruling party, would also come out.
Kiran Sharma
