If you can’t beat him, join others who can. At least that seems to be the strategy of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and actor Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena Party (JSP) as they plan to take on the ruling Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) and its founder, Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, for the simultaneous assembly and parliamentary polls next year. Reddy himself firmly believes that his party, which won 151 of the 175 assembly seats and 22 of the 25 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, can only do better. His belief stems from the slew of welfare schemes and populist measures that his government has launched in the past four years, which cover nearly all sections of society. The state government claims that 29 of its direct benefit transfer (DBT) schemes involving an expenditure of Rs 2.26 lakh crore have reached nearly 81.7 million beneficiaries in four years; another 11 non-DBT schemes with an expense of Rs 2.32 lakh crore have touched 53.8 million lives in the state.
