Hyderabad:The state government is likely to order a vigilance probe into alleged irregularities involving payment of Rs 332 crore to BRS-owned media houses during the party’s tenure in power from June 2014 to December 2023, official sources said on Thursday.The probe is expected to focus on the suspected embezzlement of public funds through inflated advertisement tariffs, preferential treatment to select newspapers, and discrepancies in circulation figures. Two newspapers in particular — ‘Namaste Telangana’ and ‘Telangana Today’ — are at the centre of the controversy. Both are published by Telangana Publications Pvt. Ltd., a company controlled by BRS chief and former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao and his family members.Official sources said the previous BRS government spent a Rs 1,757 crore on newspaper advertisements between 2014 and 2023. Of this, Rs 182 crore was paid to ‘Namaste Telangana’ and Rs 150 crore to ‘Telangana Today’, comprising nearly 19 per cent of the total advertising budget.The issue gained significance after it was revealed that tariff revisions — particularly those in 2016 and 2019 — disproportionately favoured BRS-linked publications. In the 2019 revision, while the tariff for ‘Telangana Today’ doubled from Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 per square centimetre, ‘Deccan Chronicle’ and ‘The Hindu’ saw their rates slashed to Rs 1,000 and Rs 800, respectively.Notably, Chandrashekar Rao was also holding the information and public relations (I&PR) portfolio at the time the rate hikes were approved.The circulation figures used to justify these tariff hikes are also under scrutiny. Certificates from a chartered accountant (G.V. Laxman Rao), who is known to be an auditor for Chandrashekar Rao’s family and associated companies, claimed higher circulation than what was reflected in the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) data, sources said. These inflated figures were allegedly used to claim higher advertisement rates, raising suspicions of forgery and misrepresentation, sources said.Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, when most publications were struggling, the two BRS-backed newspapers received a combined `54.91 crore — nearly 38.4 per cent of the total print media advertising budget for that period. ‘Telangana Today’, despite its limited English readership that is largely confined to Hyderabad, received Rs 24.04 crore in 2020 and Rs 13.78 crore in 2021 just for land acquisition notices issued by district collectors.The I&PR department had a committee in place to review tariff hike proposals, but in the case of the 2019 hike, the committee simply forwarded the requests from ‘Namaste Telangana’, ‘Telangana Today’, and ‘Sakshi’ without any recommendations — a violation of standard procedure. In another irregularity, ‘Telangana Today’, launched in December 2016, received government ads just three months later, despite the policy requiring an 18-month waiting period for new publications. Its initial tariff of `1,000 was later doubled in 2019 without updated circulation data. Official sources suggest that the alleged irregularities — including fake circulation figures, bypassing due process, and extending financial favours — may fall under the purview of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. The government is expected to soon initiate a detailed inquiry to ascertain criminal breach of trust, cheating and misuse of public office.
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