The two-day plenary of the ruling YSR Congress party that concluded at Guntur on Saturday was a huge success in terms of turnout, but it has also given rise to the doubts what message party president and chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy wanted to give to the people with his speeches.
In his inaugural address and the concluding address, Jagan focussed more on winning the next assembly elections in the state.
He also made an appeal to the people to be wary of the Telugu Desam Party headed by former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, as there is every possibility of Naidu putting a brake to the ongoing welfare schemes if voted to power.
Normally, a ruling party talks about winning the next elections and cautioning the people about the opposition only during the election year.
Going by that, Jagan should have talked about the assembly elections only in the next plenary to be held in July 2023, nine months before the original schedule for the elections.
It was expected that the present plenary would focus on reviewing the implementation of the welfare schemes, strengthening the party network at the grassroots levels, the issues that were brought to the notice of the party during the Gadapa Gadapaku Prabhutvam programme, any lapses in the functioning of the village secretariat systems and the feedback obtained from the surveys.
It should have also discussed the steps to be taken by the party and the government in the next two years to attract new voters towards the party, besides new programmes to be launched to win over the electorate.
But almost all the party leaders who spoke on various resolutions were more interested in attacking the TDP and Chandrababu Naidu and what he had not done during his regime.
There is nothing wrong in criticising the Naidu government’s failures, but it is the past and only because of these failures, Naidu was voted out of power. The plenary should speak about the achievements of the Jagan government and explain to the cadres to take the successes strongly into the people.
Instead, Jagan spoke about his struggles in running the party and how he had got the huge mandate three years ago, besides attacking the TDP and Naidu.
He told the party cadres to drive home the message in every village that if Naidu comes to power again, he would stop the welfare schemes.
“This is a wrong strategy. The talk of “if Naidu returns to power” should not come up at all in the party, while saying that the YSRC would win all the 175 seats. Both are contradictory and it will send a wrong message to the people,” an analyst said.
“Jagan is trying to flog a dead horse and giving it a new life by focussing more on Naidu, instead of seeking a positive mandate from the people. It has sent a wrong message that Jagan is concerned about the probability of people voting for the TDP,” an analyst said.
He said Jagan should not have talked about the next elections at this stage.
“By saying that his party has the capability of winning all the 175 assembly seats in the state in the next elections, Jagan might appear boosting the morale of the party cadre. But it has reflected either overconfidence or lack of confidence of returning to power,” the analyst observed.