It has now been proved again that YSR Congress party president and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy wants to continue his same old team to run the party.
In the last few days, Jagan has been appointing district party presidents, constituency in-charges and heads of various affiliated organisations and other wings, besides spokespersons. Only difference is that he has done away with the system of regional coordinators.
Except in districts and constituencies where the party leaders defected to either the Telugu Desam Party or Jana Sena Party, most of them are same old leaders who were responsible for the party’s debacle in the last elections.
What is worse, even at the state-level, too, Jagan is continuing the same old leaders, including general secretary Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy, despite several complaints from the party leaders during the elections.
Now, the latest talk coming out from the party circles is that Jagan is planning to bring back Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), headed by Rishi Raj Singh, as the political consultancy firm for his party, despite the fact that the firm had completely messed up the party’s chances of victory in the elections.
Sources said Rishi Raj Singh, who has no takers in any of the state, has pruned down his staff drastically and is now left with a small team of 100 people, has approached Jagan and offered his services again for the party for the coming elections.
He proposed a different strategy for the party to reorganise itself to face the next elections, though there are still more than four and a half years to go for the elections. Since Jagan also needs a strategy team to work out plans to reach out to the people, he has agreed to rope in I-PAC again.
Jagan, however, reportedly told Rishi Raj Singh to confine his team’s activity only to working out campaign strategies, social media propaganda and other communication activities.
It would mean, I-PAC will not be poking its nose in doing surveys, selection of candidates and doing party intelligence work.
It remains to be seen whether I-PAC would be able to do any justice to the YSRCP this time.