Hyderabad: Chief Minster K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s attempts to buy back Telugu daily ‘Namaste Telangana’ seems to have backfired, as the present owner-cum-contractor C. Laxmi Rajam has decided against it. The latest development is that Mr Rajam on Thursday flew to Delhi along with BJP state president G. Kishan Reddy to join the BJP in the presence of party president Rajnath Singh.
When the newspaper was launched three years ago, it was originally promoted by the family members of Mr Rao, who own majority of shares. But after realising that the newspaper would have to sustain huge losses at least in the initial years, Mr Rao decided to transfer their family shares to Mr Rajam and kept back just 24 per cent of shares. Since then, the newspaper has been giving wide coverage to the Telangana separate statehood cause highlighting activities of Telangana Rashtra Samiti. At one stage Mr Rao had promised to offer Rajya Sabha seat to Mr Rajam which ultimately went in favour of K. Kesava Rao.
But in the recent general elections, the TRS leadership were upset at the coverage given to Congress leaders including Mr Rahul Gandhi. Ever since the TRS emerged victorious on May 16, the TRS leadership has initiated a dialogue with Mr Rajam asking him to transfer the 76 per cent shares he was holding, back to the other promoters.
There was a series of meetings among the promoters and at one stage Mr Rajam reportedly agreed for share transfer and only sought time to do it. But with mounting pressures, only a day ago, Mr Rajam backed out refusing to yield to the pressure.
Later, in order to have a political patronage, Mr Rajam decided to join the BJP and informed Mr Kishan Reddy and left for Delhi. In Friday’s edition, Mr Rajam wrote a signed editorial on the front page stating the paper is committed for Telangana cause and not aligned itself to any particular party. He also wrote that his joining the BJP was not connected to the paper and it was purely a personal decision.
“I am holding majority shares and I am the owner, and there is no question of transferring shares to anybody neither am I interested to do so, I will run the paper apolitically. If the state government under TRS leadership does something wrong, we will be the first to expose it,” he said.
