Behind The Scene: YSR engineers split in journalists

The recent High Court judgement quashing the Government Order on allotting housing sites to mediapersons, IAS officers and judges has come as a blessing in disguise for Chief Minister Dr Y S Rajasekhar Reddy.

The High Court ordered that if the government wants to allot house sites to the above sections, it should do it through housing societies, but not through official committees. While it is not a difficult task for the Chief Minister to form housing societies for IAS officers and judicial officers, he has found the judgement an excellent opportunity to engineer a split in the journalist community. There is already a Housing Cooperative Society for journalists, but YSR did not take into confidence while allotting plots to fresh batch of journalists.

Following the latest High Court judgement, the existing jounalists cooperative housing society appealed to the government to continue the process through it. However, YSR did not agree to the proposal, as the society is mostly dominated by journalists from Eenadu. So, he asked the journalists close to him to form another cooperative society through which the plots allotment could be done. This has vertically split the journalists community as pro- and anti-YSR groups. Now, both the groups want to approach the court again. This will delay the plot allotment exercise, which is what YSR wants. A tit for tat for YSR-bashers among the journalists!