Adugu: The Telugu Daily from Palakurthi Taking "The Step Towards the Truth"
Adugu is a Telugu-language daily newspaper published from Palakurthi, a village and mandal headquarters in Jangaon district, Telangana. Its name means "step" or "footstep", and its masthead carries its promise in English beneath the Telugu title: "The Step Towards The Truth". The paper's imprint, printed on its editions, tells its story in a few lines: printed, published and owned by Margam Rama on behalf of Adugu Digital Media Pvt. Ltd., printed and published at Adugu Press, H. No. 7-120, Palakurthi Village and Mandal, Jangaon District, Telangana, PIN 506146; chief editor Dr Margam Lakshmi Narayana; registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India as APTEL/2010/35251. A daily newspaper run from a Telangana village — owned, edited and printed in Palakurthi itself — Adugu is grassroots Telugu journalism in the most literal sense.
Adugu publishes daily e-paper editions at epaper.adugunews.com, where dated PDF issues from 2025 and 2026 document a living daily: a four-page paper, an issue from July 2026 showing volume 2, issue 139 at a price of Rs 6.50, and masthead lines stating that it is published from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. This profile is documented from the paper's own imprint lines and e-paper archive.
Overview
Adugu is a Telugu daily newspaper of Jangaon district, Telangana, published from Palakurthi. Its RNI registration, APTEL/2010/35251, dates its registration to 2010 — the "APTEL" prefix marking it as a Telugu title registered from the then Andhra Pradesh, before Telangana's formation in 2014 re-drew the state map around it. Its publisher is Adugu Digital Media Pvt. Ltd., its proprietor-publisher is Margam Rama, and its chief editor is Dr Margam Lakshmi Narayana. The paper's published contact details include the telephone number 8499990005 and the email address adugudaily@gmail.com.
Unlike most Indian dailies, which publish from cities, Adugu's address is a village: House No. 7-120 in Palakurthi, where its own press — Adugu Press — prints the paper. Its e-paper editions are archived at epaper.adugunews.com in dated monthly folders, with issues documented across January 2025 through July 2026.
History and Registration
Adugu's registration number places its formal beginning in 2010. At that time Palakurthi lay in Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh; the reorganisation that created Telangana in 2014 and then Jangaon district placed the paper in a new district of a new state without the paper moving an inch. The RNI prefix APTEL preserves that history in the paper's legal identity: a Telugu paper of the old Andhra Pradesh registry, now a Telangana publication.
The paper's own archive shows its modern life. Dated e-paper PDFs run through 2025 into 2026 — issues in January, March, August, October and November 2025 and February and July 2026 among those documented — and a July 2026 issue carries volume 2, issue 139, four pages and a price of Rs 6.50, with the line "Published from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh" beneath the chief editor's name. A small paper, on the record, publishing daily in two Telugu states' territory from one village press.
Ownership and Editor
Adugu's imprint is unusually complete for a small daily, and it names a family-run operation. Margam Rama is the paper's printer, publisher and owner, acting on behalf of Adugu Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. The chief editor is Dr Margam Lakshmi Narayana. The shared surname and the single village address describe the classic structure of India's small-town press: a proprietor family that owns the press, publishes the paper and edits it, all from the same premises. The company's name — Adugu Digital Media — also records the paper's adaptation: a print daily from a village press, organised as a digital media company and distributed through its own e-paper platform.
Language and Editions
Adugu publishes in Telugu, the language of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Its home territory is Jangaon district and the surrounding region of central Telangana — Palakurthi is a mandal town on the routes between Warangal, Jangaon and Hyderabad — and its masthead states publication from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, the two Telugu states. The e-paper presents a single general edition — a four-page daily in the July 2026 issue sampled — carrying state, district and general news to readers in both states and, through the web, to the Telugu diaspora.
Coverage and Content
A four-page village-published daily concentrates on what its readers most need: Jangaon district and Palakurthi mandal news, Telangana state news and politics, and the national and general news of the day, compressed into a short paper that can be produced by a small team on a local press. The paper's stated motto — "The Step Towards The Truth" — frames its editorial promise in the plainest terms: each day's paper is a step toward the truth for its community. Its e-paper archive shows the paper carrying Telangana's running stories — state politics, district administration, public welfare programmes and local events — in the compressed, news-dense format its page count requires.
Small papers of this kind are the first draft of district history. Mandal-level events — a school function, a panchayat decision, a road accident, a farmers' protest, an official's visit — are covered by the Adugus of the Telugu country long before, and usually instead of, the big Hyderabad and Vijayawada dailies, whose district editions cannot descend to mandal level. Adugu's Palakurthi base puts its newsroom inside exactly that layer of public life.
Community Role
For Palakurthi and Jangaon district, Adugu is the local paper of record produced at home rather than imported from a city. A village-published daily gives its mandal a printed voice: local institutions see themselves reported, local grievances find a public page, and the district's people read their own place in Telugu print every morning. That the paper has sustained itself from a village base since its 2010 registration — through the formation of a new state and a new district around it — speaks to a settled place in its community's information life.
The paper also represents a wider phenomenon in Telangana journalism: the small proprietary daily, owned and edited by one family, printed on its own press, that survives alongside the giant Telugu media houses by knowing one district intimately. Adugu Digital Media's structure — private company, family ownership, own press, own e-paper — is that model in complete form.
Print and Digital Presence
In print, Adugu is produced at Adugu Press in Palakurthi and published from H. No. 7-120, Palakurthi — the imprint line appears on every edition. Digitally, epaper.adugunews.com hosts the paper's daily editions as PDFs, archived by month and year, with the archive documented from January 2025 through July 2026. The July 2026 issue shows the paper's current print form: four pages, volume 2, issue 139, priced at Rs 6.50. For a village daily, the e-paper is transformative: it carries Palakurthi's paper to Jangaon district readers who have moved to Hyderabad or abroad, and it preserves a dated public archive of the paper's daily life.
Audience and Reach
Adugu's audience is the Telugu-reading public of Jangaon district and central Telangana, extended by its stated publication across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and by its e-paper to readers anywhere. It publishes no audited circulation figures in the sources consulted for this profile; its documented reach is its district base, its two-state masthead claim and its unbroken run of dated e-paper editions through 2025 and 2026. Its competition is the district editions of the great Telugu dailies, against which its advantage is proximity: Adugu is not published for Jangaon from somewhere else — it is published from Palakurthi, in Jangaon.
Recent Developments
Adugu continues to publish daily through 2026, with dated e-paper editions archived in February and July 2026 and the paper's imprint, editorship and Palakurthi base unchanged across the issues sampled. The July 2026 edition — volume 2, issue 139, four pages, Rs 6.50 — shows the paper in its current settled form. Sixteen years after its registration in 2010, the step is still being taken: a family-run Telugu daily from a Telangana village, walking, as its motto promises, towards the truth, one four-page morning at a time.
