The two media heads in Andhra Pradesh are known for opening relief fund accounts and collecting funds from the people in every disaster.
Eenadu group chairman Cherukuri Ramoji Rao and Andhra Jyothi group managing director Vemuri Radhakrishna are known for collecting funds from the people in every disaster or to help some persons in critical time.
Be it Cyclone or Tsunami, they have opened relief fund accounts on their own organization names and collected huge funds.
When Tsunami hit Odisha, Ramoji Rao collected funds and claimed to have built a colony for the displaced people.
In every occasion, neither of them has given any accounts of the funds collected and money spent. The media group had always helped them to escape any such auditing or scrutiny by any other government agency.
The irony or the shameless thing is that Andhra Jyothi MD had collected donations from inseparable twins – Veena and Vaani – a few years ago and have never paid the money to the twins or their parents.
This being their practice for all these years, surprisingly Ramoji Rao had announced a contribution of Rs 10 crore to the AP Chief Minister Relief Fund to help the corona virus mitigation.
Perhaps this is the first ever time that the media baron had made any donation beyond his own media group.
More surprising is that Radhakrishna did not open the donation collection in the name of corona virus.
People who knew the style of working of the two media heads say that they are scared of starting own fund mobilization.
“If they start this fund collection game now, they are worried about the possibilities of Jagan Mohan Reddy government in AP and Chandrasekhar Rao government in Telangana ordering enquiry into all fund collection in the past,” a senior journalist quipped on reading out the news of donation of Ramoji Rao.