Telangana Today, a new English daily, has been launched from Friday by the Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao-controlled Telangana Publications Private Limited (TPPL), based in Hyderabad.
KCR had already launched a Telugu daily, Namaste Telangana, which played a major role in the struggle for a separate Telangana.
TPPL is directly supervised and managed by KCR’s trusted lieutenant and ruling TRS leader Divakonda Damodar Rao, who is also a chartered accountant.
Both Telugu and English-language newspapers are run from the same compound in the Banjara Hills area of the city. KCR also launched a Telugu TV channel, T News, which is being run from his Telangana Bhawan, the TRS headquarters, for the last five years.
KCR after becoming the CM, however, has distanced himself from the day to day affairs of the media organisations. T News is looked after by his nephew Santosh Kumar. It is currently a leading Telugu channel in Telangana. Namaste Telangana is a leading daily newspaper in the state.
Both Namaste Telangana and T News are known to further KCR’s viewpoints and public policies and gain approval for the same from the common man.
In his first page signed editorial in Telangana Today, Damodar Rao said that the English language newspaper would “symbolise the essence of India’s newest state and all that it stands for—going local to global, vibrant, responsive, modern and yet retaining the old-world charm that the city of minarets (Hyderabad) is known for”.
Damodar Rao also said that Telangana Today seems to position itself as the vox populi of Telangana without losing sight of regional, national and international happenings. As if to mirror its neutral stand, Telangana Today’s main edition came without a single photograph of either CM KCR or any of his top leaders on the first day. K Srinivas Reddy is the editor.