Rs 250 Doing So Much Damage To Jagan?

The ruling YCP leaders claim that their boss and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy is known for “mata tappadu, madama tippadu”. During the Praja Sankalpa Yatra he had taken out three years ago, he made several promises to the people and incorporated them in the YCP government’s flagship programme “Navaratnalu”.

After being voted to power, he called upon the party cadre and the village volunteers whom he had appointed as the grassroot workers for the implementation of the government schemes to consider Navaratnalu as a Bible and strive for enforcing all that mentioned in it to the tee.

Pensionla Pempu is one among the Navaratnalu and Jagan promised to increase the amount of Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000 phase-wise. He said that he would increase the Rs 1,000 in four phases, at Rs 250 each year.

Accordingly, after assuming power in 2019, he increased it by Rs 250 for the year 2019-2020 in last July and a total amount of Rs 2,250 is being paid to the elderly, single women, widows, toddy tappers and many other needful sections in the society since then.

After that, there has been no increase for the year 2020-21 and all the pensioners have been asking the village volunteers for the reasons behind not hiking the amount from
Rs 2,250 to Rs 2,500. Since July, the beneficiaries have been asking the volunteers whenever they visited their areas. The village volunteers have been facing a troublesome situation unable to answer the beneficiaries.

It is true that the state’s economy, which has been in deficit since bifurcation, has taken a beating due to the Corona crisis. It would be better if the government can specify the reason why it had not hiked the pension to the beneficiaries than keep them in a confusion.

Now, the pending Rs 250 hike seems to be doing more damage than benefit to the Chief Minister.