Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu delivered a sharp, no-nonsense rebuke to a journalist during a press interaction linked to the 31st CII Partnership Summit, dismissing a loaded question about industries shifting from Tamil Nadu to Andhra Pradesh with the line: “You want masala. I want results!”
The exchange, captured in a widely circulated video posted by Telugu360, showed DMK stooge journalist Lakshmi Subramanian, of The Week pressing Naidu on reports of companies and suppliers considering Andhra over Tamil Nadu. Naidu’s response cut through the framing, emphasizing investor choice, competitive incentives, and measurable outcomes over narrative-driven “masala.” He noted that offering land at one rupee per acre draws criticism, while withholding such incentives means projects simply do not come. Investors, he stressed, decide based on what works for them.
Naidu has long positioned Andhra as a competitive investment destination, invoking speed of clearances, land policies, energy, and infrastructure. At the summit he stressed that all states compete and that investors favor better packages.
Lakshmi Subramanian: The Week’s Long-Running DMK Stooge and Serial Misinformation Peddler
Lakshmi Subramanian, Chief of Bureau (Chennai) for The Week, has spent years cultivating a reputation as a “Dravidian stock” journalist whose reporting and social media output reliably align with DMK interests while treating facts as optional.
In February 2023, after the RBI raised the repo rate by 25 basis points, Subramanian posted that home-loan interest rates stood at 11 percent and that people would “not have a good life.” Multiple users pointed out that prevailing home-loan rates were substantially lower (many banks offered rates well below that figure). The post was widely read as an attempt to inflame sentiment against the central government rather than report accurately on monetary policy.
Her infrastructure commentary shows similar elasticity. In June 2018, while the Salem-Chennai eight-lane corridor faced political opposition in Tamil Nadu, she quote-tweeted a complaint about the poor condition of NH67 and wrote: “They cannot even properly maintain the existing roads, and now they are talking about an eight-lane road to go to the town.” In August 2026 she complained that the Trichy-Chennai highway was “completely choked” near Ulundurpet, with a 10-kilometre jam lasting more than two hours and no roadside assistance. The earlier post treated capacity expansion as an absurdity; the later one treated congestion on an existing highway as a scandal. The contradiction is left unaddressed.
On 28 September 2025, the day after the Karur stampede, Subramanian posted a screenshot of actor-turned-politician Vijay smiling inside a caravan with the caption: “This one picture has many stories to say. The smile and the expression gives too many interpretations.” Community Notes on X clarified that the image was from a Perambalur rally in which lights inside the vehicle were being switched on and off and Vijay was reacting to the crowd. She declined to delete the post, arguing that she had never explicitly named Karur and therefore could not be held responsible for the context readers attached to it. The post remained up while the tragedy was still being covered.
Hours after the November 2025 car-bomb explosion near Delhi’s Red Fort that killed multiple people, Subramanian wrote: “Tomorrow, the second phase of polling in Bihar. Today: Car bomb explosion in Delhi.” The post offered no evidence linking the blast to the election and was left standing. Critics described it as an exercise in implication rather than reporting.
Earlier, after a petrol bomb was thrown at the BJP’s Kamalalayam office in T. Nagar, Chennai, in February 2022, she posted in Tamil that the place was “not even worthy of bombings, idiots.” The tweet was deleted after backlash.
Across these episodes, the through-line is consistent. Subramanian is repeatedly functioning as a DMK-aligned figure whose work and online interventions prioritize narrative over verification.
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