State bans ads to Sakshi paper, TV
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The state has decided to withhold government advertisements to Sakshi newspaper and TV channel owned by the YSR Congress chief and Kadapa MP, Mr Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy. The information and public relations department issued a GO in this regard on Wednesday night. The decision comes close on the heels of the Central Bureau of Investigation freezing the bank accounts of the Sakshi media house.
According to sources, the state government has released advertisements worth Rs 130 crore to Sakshi newspaper since its inception in April 2008, and about Rs 1.1 crore to the television channel. Sakshi also gets Central government advertisements through the Directorate of Advertising & Visual Publicity and it is not clear whether the Centre will follow the same line.
The new I&PR commissioner R.V. Chandravadan said in the order that the government has come to know of the CBI filing a chargesheet against Jagati Publications, the publishers of Sakshi, and has decided to withhold advertisements to the paper with immediate effect. Sources say advertisements worth about Rs 6 crore were being released to Sakshi every month by the YSR government. It came down to Rs 3 crore after change of guard. The revenue from Central government advertisements, for which the DAVP pays less, is about Rs 50 lakh per month. “We did not discriminate against Sakshi and issued advertisements post-YSR regime also,” a senior official said, adding that the newspaper had the second highest circulation, which the Audit Bureau of Circulation also certified.
Significantly, the government also highlighted an exemption given to Sakshi by the YSR government. Sakshi was exempted from the rule that state ads should be released only 18 months after obtaining the Registration for Newspapers for India certificate. The YSR government had defended the exemption by pointing to the fact that Vaartha and Andhra Jyothi had been exempted in a similar manner by the former chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.
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