As soon as YS Jagan Mohan Reddy came to power, he made it a politically powerful tool for the ruling party by making the welfare programs provided by the state government to reach the beneficiaries in a different way through the volunteer system. Moves were made to win the elections through volunteers, keeping the ruling party machinery aside.
With that, many village level leaders who worked hard for Jagan’s victory in the last elections are now keeping mum. However, as it was election time and the Election Code was in force, the Election Commission had to intervene as the opposition expressed objections to the use of this system for elections.
YCP leaders became impatient after the ECI ordered to be set aside. So, they started to be unpopular with the opposition making allegations that Chandrababu Naidu and his team made false complaints and stopped this system halting the reach of welfare programmes.
In some places, they are trying to create a political upheaval by engineering mass resignations of volunteers accusing the opposition parties. Thus, YCP made all efforts to put TDP and other opposition parties in defence.
When the Election Commission ordered to stop the distribution of pensions through volunteers, the government announced to stop the system of providing the pension amount at their doors and asked them to collect the same at Village/Ward Secretariats. Thus, they tried to give a signal to the people during the elections that welfare schemes will not be provided if there is no volunteer system.
However, the TDP leaders, who had realized the evil designs of the ruling party at an earliest, started giving assurance that if they come to power they will continue the Volunteer system. TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu has been giving this assurance repeatedly in his election campaign.
Naidu succeeded in sending a clear message to the people that after he returns to power the government schemes will be implemented through volunteers as before. Moreover, he is assuring that the volunteers will be provided better facilities by the government with good salary packages. This development naturally upsets the YCP.
This made YCP attempts of creating insecurity among volunteers to force them work more vehemently for the ruling party became futile.
YCP has realized that if volunteers are given assurances to continue even if TDP comes to power, they will work for the ruling party?
Thus the volunteer system turned out to be a key issue in the present assembly elections. All parties are focusing on volunteers realizing the support they are getting from people, in view of their key services.
Chief Secretary Jawahar Reddy, who realized the change in perception of people and also volunteers, took corrective measures. Hurriedly conducting a video conference with district collectors on Monday, he said that revised guidelines will be issues for pension distribution and it can be distributed at doorstep through village and ward secretariat employees, in the absence of volunteers.
