>From Our Delhi Bureau NEW DELHI: Yet another price war has begun among the two top English dailies of Delhi to establish their supremacy with the Hindustan Times offering daily edition of 42 pages in just one rupee and the Sunday edition of 52 pages in Rs 2. The Times of India was also toying with the idea of reducing the price to one rupee since past six months, but the decision was kept on the hold. It has to await now return of its bosses from abroad before taking the decision to join the war. The local executives, however, sought to counter the Hindustan Times' drive by coming out with an announcement thanking the readers on the occasion of crossing half a million mark and pointing out that it is fastest growing English daily in Delhi. The new prices announced by the Hindustan Times with effect from last Friday have been touted as the 75th anniversary price, though insiders say the real reason was threat to its No 1 position in the capital because of a very fast rise of circulation and advertisement revenue of the Times of India. It was the Times of India which has started the price war four years ago by reducing its daily price to Rs 1.50, forcing the Hindustan Times and others to follow suit. The Hindustan Times is, however, taking the lead this time as first came the announcement of repeating the classified advertisements at a throwaway price of just Rs 100 and heavy discounts on repeat display advertisements and now the price cut. Interestingly, both the newspaper houses have limited the price war to their English dailies as even today Hindustan, the Hindi daily of Hindustan Times Group, and Navbharat Times, the Hindi daily of the Times of India Group, sell at Rs 2 per copy and that too with comparatively very less number of pages -- 12 and 10 respectively. When the first price war began, the newspaper hawkers and vendors had, however, gone on strike as reduced price meant reduced margin and ultimately it was agreed that they will get the commission of 52 paise per copy. The Hindustan Times witnessed an immediate increase of demand by about 80,000 copies, but as a newspaper agent disclosed many hawkers may be very well selling the newspaper as "raddi" at 55 to 60 paise per copy and thus earn 7 to 12 paise per copy. Hindustan Times's new Executive President Deepak Shourie, who wants to become a wizard of the newspaper market economy, says the newspaper profession itself is a competing one. "We have done market survey. And wanted to establish that we are number one in Delhi. Therefore this strategy. Shortly we will also come out with a popular scheme to attract readers. That would also increase our circulation." Shourie is brother of Arun Shourie, former editor of Indian Express and now a member of the Rajya Sabha. END. -----------