When Andhra Pradesh CM YS Jaganmohan Reddy appointed thousands of village and ward volunteers soon after YSRCP government came to power, it was believed that it would provide employment to thousands of unemployed youth as well help people to access government schemes and services at their doorsteps.

But the Jagan government is using volunteers for its political interests at the cost of public money.

Volunteers are now openly campaigning for YSRCP for the upcoming Tirupati Lok Sabha bypoll on April 17 which amounts to gross abuse of power by the state government.

Volunteers are visiting every household and distributing open letters written by Jagan on the welfare schemes and development programmes undertaken by YSRCP government during the past two years and seeking votes.

The ministers, YSRCP MLAs, MLCs, MPs and other local leaders are holding meetings with volunteers against the norms and assigning them various tasks to secure votes for YSRCP.

The mobile phones of volunteers are being seized before these meetings to ensure that they don’t record any audios or videos of these meetings and ‘leak’ to others which may invite action from the Election Commission and criticism from the Opposition parties. The phones are handed over to them after the meetings.

Each volunteer has been given a task to secure majority votes in their jurisdiction in favour of YSRCP and are being warned that they may lose their jobs if they fail to get votes for YSRCP.

All across AP, poor families are waiting for ration in long queues. Social distancing is thrown to winds. Lockdown has become a farce. Jagan Sarkar police have beaten up people crossing into the AP border, but there’s hardly any vigil at ration queues. Now, all sections are asking what happened to CM Jagan’s boastful statements about his volunteers delivering ration at the doorsteps of the people.

CM claimed door delivery of ration will start in September last year but there is no such thing even in this crucial virus lockdown period. The poor families standing in the long queues are mostly not following social distancing norms in front of the ration shops.

Jagan claimed volunteers brought lot of information on foreign returnees. But there are many gaps in the government’s handling of the returnees. These returnees are largely not following the isolation guidelines to prevent epidemic spread. In a crucial hour, many failures are exposed. Is Jagan Reddy’s pet system of volunteers also a failure just like his elaborate Navaratnalu promises?

The much-talked about Grama Volunteers system has started in AP today. There are still many doubts whether these can be called government jobs. The honorary payment is just Rs. 5,000 per month. For this, they are recruited through interviews. In the name itself, it is indicated that a volunteer job is to provide their services with a service motto. Amid such discussions, CM Jaganmohan Reddy has made a statement that sparked a lot of negative speculation in political circles.

Jagan has said that he will make efficient volunteers future leaders in his party. This is being objected to considering the need for bringing accountability and transparency in their functioning. These Volunteers are supposed to deliver welfare benefits and services to the beneficiaries. Each Volunteer has to take care of 50 households.

These Volunteers services have assumed a lot of significance in view of their crucial role at the village and ward levels. Moreover, all the Navaratnalu welfare cash transfer programmes have to be implemented through them at micro level. There are concerns that any irregularities and corruption on the part of Volunteers will bring bad reputation to the government and the ruling party. Such fears obviously forced the CM to motivate them to do selfless service. But field level politics are sure to pollute Volunteers system as days pass by.