An army of nearly 10 lakh workers reports to one man — YSRCP chief and AP CM Jagan Mohan Reddy — working for both the party and the government.
Ahead of Andhra Pradesh assembly elections, slated to be held next year, concerns have been raised about voter-profiling, role of ‘volunteers’ appointed by the government at the grassroots level. Opposition parties, civil society members and former bureaucrats have raised suspicion over alleged voter list manipulation. In this two-part series, South First breaks down the multi-tiered parallel system that is accused of voter-profiling and how the data collated is leading to voter targeting and deletion in the poll-bound State. The first part in the series tells you about the massive network of workers running a parallel system in Andhra Pradesh.
As Andhra Pradesh braces for the 2024 Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, the ruling YSRCP may have an ace up its sleeve — albeit a controversial one.
The 13-year-old party, led by first-time Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, has put in place an army of 10 lakh workers where the government machinery and the party cadre appear to overlap, giving him a level of control and access that has been deemed undesirable in electoral politics in a democracy by opposition parties, activists.
As of 25 December, the state government portal says nearly 2.56 lakh village and ward volunteers, 1.34 lakh secretariat employees from the government, and 5.2 lakh gruha saradhis, along with 45,000 in-charges from the YSRCP are active in Andhra Pradesh.
They should ideally be working at different levels, but their aim appears to be the same — propagating the works of the YSRCP government and, in turn, helping the party retain power.
In total, an army of nearly 10 lakh workers reports to one man ultimately — Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and YSRCP chief Jagan Mohan Reddy.
Civil societies, intellectuals, and retired bureaucrats all echo the concern of personal data collection and voter profiling, deeming them violative of democratic principles of fair and free elections.
What is happening in the state of Andhra Pradesh is similar to what happened in the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal, which illegally provided data analytical assistance to the 2016 presidential campaigns for Donald Trump. Here, the voter profiling allows political actors to segment people into ‘interest groups’ and either selectively target or ignore them from the electoral process, all of which interferes with free and fair conduct of election.
– Former Election Commissioner of Andhra Pradesh and Retired IAS Officer, Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar
An independent investigation by South First, conducted over a week in the Guntur West constituency revealed how voter-profiling is being carried out at the micro-level and has led to the deletion of votes ahead of elections in Andhra Pradesh.
In this part of the investigation, we give you a brief introduction to the volunteers, secretariat system, and gruha saradhis in chronological order of data collection and voter-profiling.
It was in May 2019 that the new YSRCP government, led by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, came into power in the state.
The ‘GO-:104’ introducing the volunteers.
Within a month, the state launched a scheme via Government Order (GO) 104, appointing village and ward volunteers.
The order states that the government intends to deploy volunteers to deliver welfare services to the doorstep of all eligible households, irrespective of caste, creed, religion, gender, or political affiliation.
According to the order, each volunteer would be paid ₹5,000 and was assigned to 50 households. They are solely responsible for delivering around 25 welfare services door-to-door.
More recently, on Jagan’s birthday, the government announced a ₹750 hike in their emoluments with effect from 1 January, 2024.
As per the state government portal, there were 2,55,713 village and ward volunteers as of 25 December, 2023.
They were appointed through an interview process by the Selection Committee consisting of Mandal Parishad Development Officer (MPDO), Tasildhar, Extension Officer in the Panchayat.
Since there were no written exams for the posts and appointment were made on the basis of interviews, allegations that the posts largely accommodated YSRCP workers flew fast and thick. Ministers in the Jagan Mohan Reddy government likening village volunteers to YSRCP workers has only compounded that suspicion.
Introducing another system in April 2020, the government created a new department — of village secretariats and ward secretariats — through GO 33.
The GO: 33, introducing the village and ward secretariat.
The secretariats, consisting of panchayat secretaries and functional assistants (ranging from nine to 14) would ostensibly be responsible for aiding and assisting gram panchayats in performing their functions while preserving their autonomy.
Each person in the secretariat would perform department-specific roles, such as digital assistant, welfare assistant, and horticulture assistant.
The recruitment was done through the examination by the Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC).
Notably, the first phase of the recruitment happened when the Covid-19 pandemic was at its peak.
The volunteers are tasked with coordinating with village functionaries to oversee all welfare schemes and government services for their allocated fifty households.
Moreover, secretariat employees have been designated as Booth Level Officers (BLO) for election-related duties.
However, controversy arose as opposition parties and civil societies, such as Citizen for Democracy and Praja Chaitanya Vedhika, alleged that, at the behest of YSRC party leaders, these volunteers in nexus with secretariat employees were manipulating the voting process by both adding and deleting votes.
As of 25 December, there were at least 1.34 lakh secretariat employees with 15,004 secretariats at the village and municipality levels, with salaries ranging from ₹15,000 to ₹25,000.
For both volunteers and the village and ward secretariat system, an amount of ₹3,858 crore was earmarked in the 2023-2024 budget.
These two systems received praises throughout the pandemic for being at the frontline for screening the mapped households. The Jagan Mohan Reddy government has often taken pride in deeming it a revolutionary step towards good governance and last-mile delivery of government services.
Opposition parties – Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena Party – raised a stink when YSRCP government assigned a private firm as the field operating agency (FOA) for the volunteers.
TDP alleged the firm had connections with YSRCP’s political consulting firm I-PAC. “The Field Operations Agency (FOA), which handles the volunteer system in Andhra Pradesh, has former employees of the I-PAC, who had worked for the YSRCP campaign in the last polls,” TDP’s official spokesperson Neelayapalem Vijay Kumar told South First previously. Sources from I-PAC had vehemently denied the allegations.
It was in May 2021 that the Andhra government passed GO 13 to award the contract to M/s Raminfo Limited — along with consortium members Vupadhi Techno Services and Max Detective and Guarding Services — as FOA to train, coordinate, and monitor volunteers and secretariat functionaries at the cost of around ₹68 crore for one year.
The GO: 16 awarding the services to Raminfo Limited.
The department later extended the contract period for one more year.
TDP charged that a group of IPAC employees who had previously worked with the YSRCP in 2019 played a key role in securing the project, having transitioned to working with the company. Currently, the training, coordinating, and monitoring aspects of volunteers are entirely handled by Raminfo Tech. TDP were attributing pro-YSRCP political motive to volunters system.
The volunteers initially collected the data of households to determine their eligibility for various government welfare schemes.
The information includes the name, Aadhaar numbers, dates of birth, mobile numbers, gender, caste, and religion of members of the household, as well as its door number.
This information is collected by the volunteers every six months for re-verification. At least 10 apps exist where the data is fed for various operations, depending on departments.
However, the government has said that the data collected by the volunteers was maintained by another private firm — TCS — and that it was safe.
The volunteers became the focus of discussion when the local body elections were held in the state in February 2021. Opposition parties have filed memos with the election commission accusing volunteers of campaigning for the YSRCP, reportedly in nexus with the party’s workers.
An earlier order from 2020 by SEC, restricting volunteers from the poll works.
The then state election commissioner (SEC) Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar issued a circular in March 2021 ordering the volunteers not to participate in any political party’s campaigns in Urban body elections and to deposit the government mobiles until the elections were over, as they allegedly utilised the data of beneficiaries for political purposes.
A Division Bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court, modifying a single-bench judgment, asserted that volunteers should submit their phones to an officer appointed by the local municipal commissioner, rather than to the district collector.
Later, Public Interest Litigations (PILs) were filed in the Andhra Pradesh High Court and the Supreme Court by various organisations challenging the duties and functions of volunteers. Hearings are currently underway.
With more legal issues arising, including the orders from Andhra Pradesh Chief Election Officer (CEO) Meena Kumar to keep volunteers at bay in poll works, the YSRCP appointed gruha saradhis (house charioteers) in February 2023.
In December 2022, the gruha saradhis were announced by YSRCP and trained as part of the campaign called Ma Nammakam Nuvve Jagan, which roughly translates to “Our trust is Jagan”.
The gruha saradhis visited every house after campaigning for YS Jagan began in April 2023, explaining the schemes he launched and gathering data about the level of satisfaction with the incumbent government.
In this exercise, the gruha saradhis, on par with the volunteers, were able to identify those who were happy with the incumbent government and those who were not.
At least two to three gruha saradhis are appointed for every 50 households, ie, for every volunteer.
As per the YSRCP instructions, the volunteer in the initial days introduced the gruha saradhis as YSRCP caretakers and problem-solvers for the beneficiaries.
A YSRCP source told South First that one out of every two or three gruha saradhis was a woman, while in availability another will be a relative of the volunteer. This in effect blurs the line between government-appointed volunteers and party-appointed “charioteers”.
The Election Commission has restricted the use of the aforementioned volunteers in party campaigns and poll works. The use of their relatives as gruha saradhis thus helped the YSRCP sidestep that restriction.
On another tier, a sachivalayam with a population of 3,000-5,000 is established, where three convenors per one sachivalayam along these gruha saradhis work for the party.
At the top level, one mandal in-charge and at least two to three cluster in-charges were appointed at the constituency level.
As per the party data, there are 5.2 lakh gruha saradhis, along with 45,000 sachivalayam convenors, and around 1,000 mandal and cluster in-charges across the state. They work for the YSRCP for a health insurance amount of ₹5 lakh for the family.
The YSRCP is consistently accused of using this entire network to tilt the electoral scales in its favour in more ways than one.
Part 1 of this investigative effort delved into how the incumbent YSRCP put in place a system — via government and party — that could help its poll effort.
Part 2 focuses on how this system was allegedly used to remove the names of eligible voters and interfered with the process of free and fair elections.
May 14, 2024
May 14, 2024
May 14, 2024
May 13, 2024
May 13, 2024
May 13, 2024
