Jagananna Amma Vodi scheme being launched at Chittoor on Thursday, to coincide with the completion of one year of Praja Sankalpa Padayatra of Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy is said to be the game changer for the YSR Congress party government in the state in the coming days.
The scheme, aimed at providing financial assistance of Rs 15,000 to nearly 43 lakh mothers or guardians who send their children to school – government, aided and unaided private schools and also junior colleges, has been taken up by the Jagan most prestigiously.
Jagan has given so much importance to the Amma Vodi scheme that he had diverted funds from other departments to this scheme, notwithstanding the criticism from the opposition parties, as it is the first of its kind welfare programme in the country.
It is expected to fetch huge political benefits to the ruling YSR Congress party in the coming days, if implemented properly.
That is precisely why the government has been giving a lot of publicity for the scheme for quite some time. On Thursday, huge advertisements were given to all major local and national media being published in the Telugu states, except of course, Andhra Jyothy.
However, only Sakshi carried a frontpage story on Amma Vodi scheme, since it is the official mouth piece. Though Eenadu also got the advertisement, it did not bother to give it any coverage on the front page.
However, Andhra Jyothy which did not get the advertisement, chose to carry a negative story saying Jagan had resorted to huge borrowings to fund the scheme and that it hardly benefitted 42.12 lakh mothers.
Coming to other reports, Eenadu and Andhra Jyothy expectedly played up the report of the high drama by Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu on the highway in Vijayawada on flagging of bus yatra by Amaravati farmers; and his subsequent arrest by the police.
It was a banner story for both the newspapers which described that a tense situation is prevailing in Amaravati and Vijayawada, that might cause trouble elsewhere in the state.
Eenadu also carried a special report questioning the propriety of shifting the capital from Amaravati, which already had all the required facilities to run the legislature, judiciary and executive wings. Apparently, it was trying to send a message to the bosses in Delhi that the shifting of capital was a futile exercise that would only cause huge burden on the state exchequer.
At the same time, it also carried reports on how the Jagan government is fast-tracking measures to provide facilities at Visakhapatnam for the administrative mechanism.
The clearance given by the state high court for the conduct of local body elections in the state is yet another story that made a big headline in the Telugu dailies.
It is a banner story for Sakshi and second lead for others. Eenadu and Andhra Jyothy have sought to project the elections as a referendum on the performance of the Jagan government.
The crash of an Ukranian aeroplane in Iran killing 176 people on board and the demand made by former minister Y S Vivekanand Reddy’s wife for a CBI probe into her husband’s death are the other interesting stories that made it to the front page of the Telugu dailies.