GO turns into a PR nightmare for N Chandrababu Naidu

Vijayawada: AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has asked his office to do damage control after it drew flak from various quarters for its a GO issued recently. Mr Naidu also slammed I&PR officials for not taking utmost care while preparing the GO. The GO, RT No. 2497, stated that 25 journalists were “to carry out publicity and other works as back office of the CMO.”

With national-level criticism and controversy, and Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan coming down heavily on Mr Naidu by tweeting: “Now AP CM officially bribes 25 journos to do his PR & publicity work”, the CMO has directly entered the scene to do damage control, and will now bring a new GO with revised content.

Following the recommendations of the I&PR department, the AP government agreed to hire 25 journalists on December 7 on a one-year contract. The GO also mentioned that each journalist would be paid a monthly salary of Rs 51,468 which would cost the exchequer Rs 12,86,700 per month. The names of the journalists were not disclosed.

Generally, journalists have the right to work in any government and private organisation at different designations as media liaison officer, public relations officer, information officer, and others as these posts have designated roles and responsibilities.

As the GO termed just a team of 25 journalists without mentioning the specific designations, roles and responsibilities, it paved way for the criticism and controversy. Prasanth Bhushan, who criticised it as an act of bribing journalists officially as they work directly from the CMO as back office team.

To this, Information and Public Relations commissioner S. Venkateswar said the controversy and criticism on the GO terminology was ‘witless’ and questioned why this was being objected only in AP while is already practiced in all states, along with the Prime Minister’s Office.