VIJAYAWADA: Whether or not YSR Congress MLAs get re-nominated by the ruling party for fighting the 2024 elections will largely depend on how they have performed in the Gadapa Gadapaku Mana Prabhutvam mass contact programme.
YSRC president and Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy will be reviewing the performance of YSRC legislators at a workshop which is expected to be held most probably on Friday.
Incidentally, YSRC had hired IPAC (Indian Political Action Committee) to evaluate performance of its MLAs and their relationship with their voters before the ruling party could finalise its list of candidates for the 2024 elections.
The IPAC survey revealed that relations of legislators with public in their respective constituencies had been poor. This has been attributed to amounts related to welfare schemes being directly credited into the bank accounts of beneficiaries to avoid intermediaries and possible leakages. Under the Telugu Desam regime earlier, the welfare schemes, including social security pensions, used to be handed over to beneficiaries by respective ministers, legislators or party leaders. This led to individual beneficiaries appreciating leaders of the party in power for getting their benefits.
However, there had been a lot of corruption in implementation of schemes by the Telugu Desam government, as middlemen had been involved.
To avoid this, Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy decided to introduce direct benefit transfer. Accordingly, the amounts went to accounts of beneficiaries and YSRC legislators or ministers had no visibility.
To inform masses that it is the ruling party that is providing benefits, the CM formulated the Gadapa Gadapaku Mana Prabhutvam mass contact programme. Ministers and legislators were asked to meet the public in every Assembly segment and remind them about the schemes and benefits being allotted to them. Though initially, legislators faced the ire of public in several places, masses started submitting requisitions, which turned a plus point for YSRC.
The YSRC president then asked IPAC to again conduct a survey about the performance of legislators. Sources say survey revealed that 60 legislators have been found to be poor performers. After the MLAs were asked to buck up, the number of poor performers reduced to 45 and then to 27. Now, Jagan Mohan Reddy is reportedly going to warn these 27 legislators to get their act together or be denied tickets.
It is learnt that the YSRC president will finalise the list of Assembly candidates six months before the 2024 elections.
