VIJAYAWADA: After free insurance, it is now housing plots’ lure for TD membership drive. DWCRA women and anganwadi workers are being pressured to take TD membership; even pensioners are not left behind. The TD government launched a housing plots scheme simultaneously with party membership drive to attract downtrodden people.
Even after such strenuous efforts, the TD could not cross last year’s count. It even failed to reach the BJP’s 45-lakh membership registrations in the state.
As the month-long membership drive ended on Wednesday, MLC Share-ef, who looks after the party’s organisational affairs, held a teleconference with party MLAs, constituency incharges and all other important leaders of TD on Thursday to discuss the same.
An MLA from Kadapa, who recently joined the TD from the YSRC, said despite informing the public that they could not avail of any government schemes like housing plots, ration cards, pensions and insurance until they registered for party membership, there was not much response from the public.
A DWCRA woman from Bhimadolu, West Godavari district, said to become beneficiary of housing plot scheme, one has to pay Rs 120, out of which 100 is towards TD membership registration fee and Rs 20 is for the application form of housing plot. She alleged that TD leaders were forcing Anganwadi workers to register for membership and threatening them with replacement and that they would not be able to avail of any government schemes.
MLC and party office in charge Mr T.D. Janardhan condemned these allegations and said: “We are not luring public by showing housing plots and no leader is forcing anyone to register for membership.”
He admitted that the registration process was slow due to the impact of demonetisation and also because of agricultural and wedding season.
He said the coordination committee held on Thursday, chaired by party chief N. Chandrababu Naidu, decided to extend the membership drive for 15 more days.
The TD set a target of one crore membership registration, for which it completed 37 lakh in AP and 2.5 lakh in Telangana till November 30.
Demonetisation disturbs TD’s grand plans
While TD leaders are striving hard to reach the target set for the TD membership drive, the announcement of demonetisation on November 8 seems to have had a bad impact on the drive.
With this Opposition parties rendered their services and support to public at banks and ATMs, while TD leaders were busy with the Jana Chaitanya Yatras.
A senior TD MLA said: “We have seen the agony of the public personally on not waiving farmer and DWCRA loans fully and not constructing even a single house for the weaker section. These and other issues post demonetisation resulted in fading trust on the TD policies among the public, which impacted the membership drive.”
Another TD MLA said the public who registered for TD membership last year by getting attracted to the insurance policy refused the membership this year, as the insurance is for accidents leading to death but not for medical insurance. The Chandranna Bhima policy, too, failed to woo the people.
