Telugu Desam eyes welfare route to 2019

Vijayawada: The TD is preparing strategies to win the 2019 elections and will focus designing welfare schemes fit every household. The TD is planning to establish corporations for major communities. Along with Arya Vaisya Corporation, it is also planning to set up an OC Corporation to provide scholarships for economically backward students, fee reimbursement, unemployment stipend and self-employment loans on subsidy. The TD is willing to cater to other communities through corproations for the SC, ST, BC and Kapus. The opposition YSRC is still striving hard to finetune its strategies. 

The ruling TD has scheduled programmes to intensively get into the public and will visit every household through Intintiki Telugu Desam programme. For this, it is conducting surveys to study ways to reach out to maximum public. A senior Cabinet minister said, “It is time to focus on short-term goals first, as it takes time to accelerate the long-term goals process.” He said, “There is necessity to complete projects that are in the final stages, and coming to welfare and development schemes, they will focus on the public.”

According to TD sources, the government is even planning to reduce power tariffs. It has not directed the electricity regulatory commission on power tariffs for 2017-18. It is working on modalities to reduce tariffs within 6 months. The government has also instructed the civic authorities informally on not increasing any kind of taxes and become troublesome for public.  AP TD chief K. Kala Venkat Rao said, “We have gained confidence with the majority of public supporting us and this has been established clearly in Nandyal and Kakinada elections.”

He said, “Our target is to move forward for attaining more than 80 per cent of happiness index among public. We are not doing all this in view of elections. But it is part of our long-term plans.” Agriculture minister Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy said, “The public strongly believes in the TD leadership and Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu as we have started from zero in residual Andhra Pradesh and are trying to place the state in comfort zone.” He added, “We are very much focused not only on short term goals, but also on the long term.” The TD is even planning to take a step back in the issues of Janmabhoomi committees, sand, liquor and others which had severe opposition from public temporarily.