In January 2022, the Pushkar Singh Dhami government decided to release Rs 71.99 lakh to a Delhi-based magazine called Khabar Manak. The magazine didn’t officially exist yet. 

In fact, it was actually registered only six months later, according to the Press Registrar General of India’s records.

The receipt listed a phone number belonging to Archana Rajhans – who was once the chief editor of the magazine but now describes herself as a former journalist and often posts pro-Dhami content on her X profile. 

Reached for comment, Rajhans distanced herself from the publication. “I’ve worked at 25 places. One of them was Khabar Manak. I’m not responsible for anything there,” she said before refusing to answer further questions and blocking this correspondent on WhatsApp.

Curiously, there’s no trace of either the magazine’s owner Janardan Kumar or the magazine online, except a Facebook page Crime Dastak Reporters. 

Created in September 2024, this page has over 5,000 followers and features four logos on its cover image – Crime Dastak, Crime Dustak Reporters, Vartaman Kranti, and Khabar Manak. The posts linked to Khabar Manak are not news reports, but announcements of hirings and grants of press cards etc. One Sandeep Chaubey is listed as the editor-in-chief.

On a phone call, Chaubey told Newslaundry that he will put us in touch with the owner, Janardan Kumar. But on the next call, Chaubey appeared on the line with one Kapil Sahu, who identified himself as Janardan Kumar’s “personal assistant”. When Newslaundry began asking queries about Khabar Manak, Sahu handed over the phone to one Lal Ji. Lal Ji refused to comment, saying he was merely a “freelancer”.

The National Union of Journalists and Ashok Navratan, a former member of the Press Council of India, had raised concerns about ads to this magazine. Navratan had written to the Uttarakhand Lokayukta, marking the Uttarakhand Governor and the Chief Justice of the Nainital High Court. The NUJ had sent a letter to the Governor and the CM. 

The ad money was reportedly halted in February 2022 after a letter from the Governor’s office to the CM’s office.

But the Uttarakhand state information department’s website shows Khabar Manak was eventually paid the money, in the financial year 2022-23.

This bizarre transaction is part of the larger story of how the Dhami government in Uttarakhand has distributed Rs 314.3 crore across print media over the last four financial years – Rs 129.6 crore on newspapers and magazines, Rs 56 crore on pamphlets, and Rs 128 crore on agencies responsible for print ads. 

It was a spending spree that had benefited everyone, from international magazines like Time and The Economist to the Hindutva magazines Panchjanya and Organiser, and even a few obscure publications with questionable circulation.

Newslaundry had earlier reported on TV channels cornering the largest share of the Dhami government’s media spending. But in terms of print ads, last year saw the highest spending in the last five years – the amount rose from Rs 27 crore in 2020-21 to Rs 40.77 crore in 2024-25. These ads appeared in over 1,800 newspapers and magazines. 

The scale of this spending becomes even more striking when placed against the backdrop of Uttarakhand’s unusually crowded media landscape. Despite having just 1.1 crore people, it has 957 newspapers and magazines empanelled with the Central Bureau of Communications for government advertisements – second only to Uttar Pradesh’s 2,573. To put this in perspective: Rajasthan, eight times larger by population, has only 530 empanelled publications. Madhya Pradesh, seven times larger, has 694. Delhi has just 459.