It is an open secret that the village and ward volunteers appointed by the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government five years ago are now coming in handy for the YSR Congress party in the ongoing electioneering for the upcoming elections.
Though many village and ward volunteers have either been suspended or they, themselves, have quit the jobs to campaign for the YSR Congress party, many of them are still working at the field level in the name of distribution of government benefits among the beneficiaries, thereby indirectly helping the YSRCP.
This has promoted the opposition parties and some NGOs like the Citizens for Democracy to lodge a complaint with the Election Commission of India, requesting it to keep the volunteers out of elections and place restrictions on them during the course of elections.
On Saturday, the EC issued orders imposing several restrictions on the volunteers, stating that there was a continuous flow of complaints against volunteers and newspaper reports against volunteers influencing elections at grassroots level, besides the high court orders.
Accordingly, the EC barred volunteers from distribution of cash benefits under any scheme (including pensions) to eligible beneficiaries.
It asked the volunteers to deposit the handheld devices (mobile/tablets/any other) provided to them with the district election officers till the completion of model code of conduct.
The EC asked the state government to make alternative arrangement for distribution of benefits of ongoing schemes to already selected beneficiaries using DBT (electronic transfer) preferably or through other regular government employees.