Anantapur: Village volunteers, secretariat staff being accused of political bias

Anantapur: The village volunteers and village secretariats concept aimed at triggering gram swaraj and bringing administration and government services to the doorstep is now under severe criticism due to the YSRCP leaders at the mandal and panchayat level in several parts of district calling the shots and applying pressure on staff to ignore TDP voters and keep them outside the ambit of welfare schemes just to settle local political scores with them.

Political observers feel that unless the Chief Minister at the top level and collectors at the district level monitor the scheme implementation, the very objective of gram swaraj will be jeopardised and defeated.

One Ramana Reddy in Garladinne village told The Hans India that his family was denied benefit under housing scheme. Not only some who are identified as TDP voters are meted out the same treatment. The chief minister's promise that all eligible will be covered under welfare irrespective of political affiliations, on a saturation mode but at the ground level the thinking of lower level leaders seemed to be different. They are settling local political scores using the weapon of welfare, he bemoaned.

Lakshmi Naidu, a volunteer in rural Anantapur mandal, who resigned to her job told The Hans India that work pressure and political pressure to do injustice to the ruling party rivals prompted her to quit her job. If this attitude continued, the much-promised gram swaraj will be a fiction, she maintained. Many victims of discrimination in rural areas are waiting for the chief minister's 'Racha Banda' programme to complain of village politics that are diluting the village secretariats and volunteers' system.

Several NGO functionaries, who refused to be quoted stated their interactions with people in rural areas confirmed the political stress the scheme is under. These social functionaries feel that the functioning of village volunteers should be under scrutiny. They should be ensured that the spirit of scheme be executed and dabbling in politics should be stopped.

Many volunteers are under cloud and are accused of corruption. Some volunteers are allegedly collecting bribes for the services given by them. Many villagers, who are traditionally TDP supporters, feel that the local YSRCP leaders are discriminating between YSRCP and TDP voters. The ruling party MLAs and even the district collector Nagalakshmi too are frequently going for surprise inspections of village secretariats. But this is not enough, an exclusive camp of victims of discrimination should be organised by the district collector and an on the spot redressal of people's grievances should be done. Unless a serious effort is put in by all stakeholders, many surprises are in store for the government, political observers say.

Local MLA Anantha Reddy too received several complaints from people on the village volunteers and secretariat staff biased functioning.ZP CEO Bhaskar Reddy told The Hans India that the functioning of secretariats and volunteers will be improved and the ZP officials would apply their mind on the subject. The MPDOs will be made responsible for the effective functioning of secretariats. There are 900 plus village secretariats and 15,995 village volunteers in the district.