Hyderabad: India’s youngest state Telangana will see the launch of Telangana Today, an English-language daily from Telangana Publications P Ltd., a company in which state Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has an investment.
Telangana Today, will be the second publication from Telangana Publications, the company in which the CM has an investment of a little over Rs 4 crore (as disclosed in a 2014 affidavit). The company’s first newspaper was a Telugu daily, Namasthe Telangana. This was launched three years earlier, at the height of the Telangana Separation Movement.
Rao also has interests in a company called Telangana Broadcasting. It runs T-News, a Telugu news channel.
For Telangana Today, the company has hired veteran journalist K Srinivas Reddy as editor and began hiring people from rival newspapers. Reddy was associate managing editor of The Hindu in Hyderabad before taking this new role. He said “The main focus of this English daily will be on Hyderabad and Telangana, addressing the issues of the people and will not be the mouth piece of the government”.
Sources said the CM had been considering with the plan of bringing English daily exclusively for Telangana for a while and made up his mind recently. “It’s true we are coming up with an English daily titled Telangana Today. It may take two to three months for its formal launch. We will have multiple editions in Telangana in a phased manner and will provide all the coverage Telangana people desire,” a close confidant of the CM told this newspaper.
KT Rama Rao, the son of KCR and minister of Information and Technology is personally overseeing the content and the design of the daily.
KCR feels, the existing English dailies are not covering his party and government extensively, thus leaving enough vacuum for the positive coverage of the party. Hence, KCR wants to have his own newspaper to highlight the proposals, works carried out and accomplishments.
