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REGIONAL ROUNDUP

From the way most English language newspapers have covered the event, and not just the financial dailies, you'd think Vodafone chief Arun Sarin was the head of state of an important country, not just a businessman trying to buy another company. Details of the Anil Ambani decision to bid for Hutch-Essar, Vodafone deciding it wanted a piece of the action as well, and other players like Maxis also evincing interest, all have been played out in excruciating detail in the English language papers.

Not so in the regional languages. While a host of papers have simply given the news a miss, most others have kept it to their business pages. In the north, Rajasthan Patrika had it as the lead on the business page for two days in a row, with a box on the funds being raised by Anil Ambani in the overseas market in preparation for the bid. On another day, its story said Vodafone was ahead. Dainik Bhaskar too kept the story on the business pages, but not even as the lead, it was a small story on the second business page.

In the Kannada press, the story received very little attention. The proposed sale and the subsequent interest shown by Vodafone and Reliance were carried in the business pages of the newspapers. There were no special stories or editorials on the subject. All the Kannada dailies carried only news agency reports on the issue.

In Andhra Pradesh, the event also received only a middling response from the Telugu press. All the three leading Telugu newspapers, Eenadu, Vaartha and Andhra Jyothi ran only single-column and two-column stories on the buy-out bids for the country's fourth largest mobile operator. The newspapers carried a single-column story on the Hindujas evincing interest in acquiring Hutch-Essar on their business pages on Friday. On Tuesday, Andhra Jyothi carried an analytical copy saying Hutch's impressive earnings were the reason why it was so coveted.

While Loksatta and Sakal didn't carry a single story on this controversy in the last eight days, Maharashtra Times carried few stories on its business page. These were abridged translations of the stories that appeared in The Economic Times. The front pages of Marathi newspapers were dominated by various developments relating to the forthcoming municipal polls of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and nine other municipal corporations. The national stories which made to the front page were stories related to the Nithari killings and the controversy and violence over land acquisition for SEZs in West Bengal.