Alleging large scale irregularities in issuing government advertisements by the Information and Public Relations (I&PR) Department during YS Jaganmohan Reddy’s regime, MLAs have demanded to constitute a House Committee to probe into such allegations. The members alleged that ex-commissioner Vijaykumar Reddy could not be relieved till the completion of the House Committee and alleged he was the mastermind of the advertisement scam
Accusing that former I&PR chief issued most of advertisements for Sakshi, owned by wife of former chief minister Jaganmohan Reddy, they also expressed their discontent over the `bias’ replies of I&PR Minister Parthasarathi.
In the last five years, the Minister said that Sakshi paper was paid Rs. 371 crores and rest of all news papers were paid Rs. 481 crores towards advertisements. The Information Minister said that some newspapers did not take advertisements due to lack of government payments.
MLA Shravan Kumar alleged that the Information and Public Relations Department had not given correct information. Press releases and Audit Bureau circulation certificates to be placed before the House, he said. He objected that the officials are misleading the House with wrong information.
Members alleging that Sakthi newspapers were distributed at free of cost in some places, they demanded the circulation figures before 2019 should be revealed and the basis of payments made for five years should be clarified.
Ponnaru MLM Dhulipala Narendra objected to the minister’s reply that there was no bias in issuing government advertisement. He asked how he would answer that there was no bias when there was bias in the payments made to the papers owned by the Chief Minister’s wife. He wondered how they could say that even though the statistics show that advertisements were not given on the basis of circulation.
He demanded that action should be taken against those who misled the House and a comprehensive inquiry should be conducted on the issue of advertisements. Speaker Ayyanna Patrudu suggested the minister to clarify the issue of advertisements to the House Committee in view of the outrage of the members.
