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A week ago, Jana Sena Party chief Pawan Kalyan made a startling claim linking untraced missing women in Andhra Pradesh to an alleged human trafficking network, alleging that this network was enabled by data gathering and surveillance carried out by government-appointed village and ward volunteers. He has been booked over these remarks, and the state Women’s Commission even asked him to furnish proof for the “panic-inducing” statement which he is yet to furnish in public. However, he continued his attack against the volunteer system, questioning how secure the data collected by the volunteers was, and alleging that it was being misused by non-government agencies. The controversy has now snowballed, with Telugu Desam Party chief Chandrababu Naidu too echoing Pawan Kalyan’s claims. Meanwhile, the Communist Party of India (CPI) in Andhra Pradesh has called for a probe into the allegations.
The village and ward volunteer system was launched by the YSRCP government in 2019 to carry out last-mile governance. Over 2.5 lakh village and ward volunteers were appointed to act as the points of access for welfare schemes. They perform various activities on behalf of the state government including door delivery of pensions and household-level data collection for various reasons including identifying beneficiaries for welfare schemes. These volunteers, many of whom are college graduates ages between 18 and 35, were recruited to work in the village and ward secretariats. They are paid a monthly honorarium of Rs 5,000 and are given 50 to 100 households to work with.
Speaking at a public meeting in Eluru on July 9, Pawan Kalyan claimed that senior officials from central surveillance agencies had told him that village and ward volunteers in Andhra Pradesh were surveilling residents and targeting women living alone, to hand them over to anti-social forces who were kidnapping them. He also claimed that senior leaders from the YSRCP government were involved in the alleged trafficking network.
A couple of days later, on July 12, he changed the course of his attack a little. Pawan Kalyan said that he had no personal grudge against volunteers, and that he was only criticising the functioning of the system. He also claimed that the data collected through village and ward volunteers in the state is stored at Nanakramguda in Hyderabad and demanded that Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy respond as to why an agency in Nanakramguda has been given the data of Andhra Pradesh's residents.
On Friday, July 14, TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu backed Pawan Kalyan’s allegations, stating figures of missing women and questioning the use of data gathered by volunteers. Naidu has criticised the functioning of the volunteer system in the past too, alleging that the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) government was misusing them to carry out activities benefiting the party instead of just ensuring public access to government schemes. On Friday, flagging off the Maha Sakthi Chaitanya Ratha Yatra focused on women’s welfare at the TDP headquarters in Mangalagiri, Naidu addressed the village and ward volunteers and said, “Do government activities that are useful for the people. If you do party-related work, women in the state will not spare you.”
“Volunteers are entering homes and collecting people’s personal information on the pretext of providing various benefits. They are even asking women if they suspect their husbands are having extramarital affairs. They are asking men what the women in their families are doing outside the house… Isn’t this wrong? Privacy… Why do they need our personal information?” Naidu asked.
Incidentally, TDP itself was embroiled in a data theft scandal when Naidu was the Chief Minister, ahead of the 2019 Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. A private firm called IT Grids which had developed the TDP’s official app Seva Mitra was booked for voter data theft, for allegedly stealing data related to Aadhaar, electoral rolls and beneficiaries of government schemes from the government database to help improve TDP’s election outcomes.
The YSRCP government’s volunteer system too is often compared with the Janmabhoomi committees established by the TDP government back in 2014. While the committees were expected to improve access to welfare schemes and were also tasked with identifying beneficiaries, the YSRCP had alleged widespread corruption and discrimination along party lines, alleging that the committee members favoured TDP supporters and demanded bribes from others.
During his election campaign, Jagan had announced that he would scrap the Janmabhoomi committees immediately after coming to power. “In the name of transparent governance, there is a mafia operating in villages. They ask for party affiliation first to help the beneficiary. Without paying bribes, one cannot get pension or ration,” he alleged in an election rally. While launching the volunteer system, the YSRCP government claimed that it would be different from the TDP government’s Janmabhoomi committees.
Pawan Kalyan too had questioned why the volunteer system was introduced parallel to the legislature, executive, and judiciary, saying there was no mechanism to regulate the volunteer system if it goes wrong. “The President heads the Red Cross in the country while in the state the Governor heads the organisation. Who is heading the volunteer system?” he asked Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. Speaking about citizens’ data being used as a political tool, Venkatesu said, “The state government has created a parallel structure with the village/ward secretariats, which is now likely being used to facilitate highly centralised data collection under the Chief Minister’s office where political decisions are also taken.”
Political analyst K Nageshwar said that with many volunteers alleged to be acting in favour of the ruling YSRCP, the attack by Jana Sena and TDP is aimed at weakening citizens’ trust in them ahead of the 2024 Assembly elections. “The opposition believes that that volunteer system is a strong wing of the YSRCP and it is attacking it to weaken people’s trust in the volunteers,” he said.
Meanwhile, CPI Andhra Pradesh secretary K Ramakrishna has sought a probe into the allegations of data theft through the volunteer system. “The government is responsible for protecting the data of the citizens but unfortunately there are allegations that the government is stealing and misusing the data. The Chief Minister has to respond immediately,” he said.
The YSRCP, however, has strongly refuted the allegations of data theft. Former YSRCP MP and Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) chairman YV Subba Reddy refuted Pawan Kalyan’s allegations on Sunday, July 16, claiming that the volunteer system ensured transparency in delivering government schemes and did not “loot” people like TDP’s Janmabhoomi committees. He also challenged the opposition leaders to a public debate on the issue.