YSRCP recruits army of 7 lakh gruha saradhis to win 2024 polls

Visakhapatnam: In a first of its kind, YSR Congress Party is all set to kickstart its election preparation for the general elections in 2024 with the recruitment of a strong army of seven lakh ‘gruha saradhis’ and secretariat conveners to ensure micro management of 1.60 lakh families.

This is considered as a mammoth exercise for management of booth-level elections. The gruha saradhis are selected through a rigorous exercise based on mapping of the sachivalayam (village/ward secretariat) volunteer system launched by YSRCP. The new recruits will also campaign against the propaganda unleashed by what the ruling party terms by the media houses close to Telugu Desam Party.

At a programme held at its central office at Tadepalli, YSRCP general secretary and Government Advisor (Public Affairs) Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy released the posters and a video documentary on ‘Jagananna Maa Bhavishyath’ (Jagananna our future) on Tuesday.

The two-week long campaign will be launched in the nook and corners of the State on April 7 following the undertaking of another mass contact programme named ‘Gadapa Gadapaku Mana Prabhutvam’ (GGMP). He described it as a public outreach programme to explain about the government’s welfare and developmental schemes during the past four years.

With the recent humiliation suffered by the YSRCP by losing one MLC seat from MLA quota and three graduates’ constituency MLC seats to main Opposition TDP which subsequently led to suspension of four ruling party MLAs, Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy at a preparatory meeting held with the party regional coordinators and MLAs on Monday, said he will not ignore anyone in the election process. He said all the MLAs will be consulted for the ticket-finalisation exercise. “The ultimate goal is to win all 175 seats,” he told them.

YSRCP, which has completed 13 years of existence on March 12, 2011 after Jagan Mohan Reddy and his mother Vijayamma resigned respectively as Kadapa MP and Pulivendula MLA and won the subsequent by-elections, wants to retain power with improved margin through a multimedia campaign and making use of social media so as to reach all segments of voters.

As part of the strategy, it wants that all the beneficiaries who were given Rs 2 lakh crore cash through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) under various schemes become propaganda agents of the party.

According to Sajjala, based on the feedback gathered from the public during the GGMP taken by MLAs and volunteers, around 80-90 per cent of the public stated that they have noticed a real change and expressed their confidence that ‘Jagan is the State’s only future.’

In a review of GGMP, the Chief Minister also said that around 92 per cent of people out of 1.6 crore families in rural areas and 84 per cent in urban areas, which means 87 per cent of people on average across the State benefited through DBT or non Direct Benefit Transfer schemes implemented by the government, Sajjala pointed out.