The IIS officer Tumma Vijay Kumar Reddy, who is facing charges of corruption, abuse of power and quid pro quo while serving as the Commissioner of Information and Public Relations and Ex-officio Secretary during the YSRCP government, is making various moves to avoid appearing before the ACB inquiry.
When the authorities served him a notice on Friday to appear for the inquiry, he replied that he was busy now and would come in April if he could. Meanwhile, Vijay Kumar Reddy has filed an anticipatory bail petition in the AP High Court. It is still under consideration, till now he could not get any protection from the court with regard to arrest.
In this context, making excuses for not appearing for the inquiry has become a topic of discussion. ACB officials are expecting to serve him a notice again to appear for the inquiry on a certain date. The ACB had registered a case against Vijay Kumar Reddy in November last year, alleging that Jagan’s own companies Sakshi news paper and TV channels had benefited from government advertisements and bill payments during the YSRCP government.
While most of the government was paid to Sakshi Media Group towards advertisement and several of Sakshi Media Group staff had been appointed as employees in I&PR and AP Digital Corporations, besides committing several other irregularities.
As part of the investigation, The ACB collected key evidence against him. It concluded that Sakshi alone had obtained advertisements worth Rs. 371.12 crore (43 percent of the total advertisements given to newspapers) between 2019-24.
At the same time, advertisements worth Rs. 26.71 crore were given to all TV channels, of which Rs. 16.17 crore were issued to Sakshi and two other YSRCP- friendly channels. It was found that ABN Andhra Jyothi, TV5 and Maha News channels did not give a single advertisement, besides newspaper Andhra Jyoti. It was concluded that they caused a huge loss to the government exchequer.