TDP launches membership enrolment drive

Telugu Desam president N Chandrababu Naidu today formally launched the party's biennial membership enrollment drive by renewing his membership.

TDP, which is ruling Andhra Pradesh, has set the target to increase the membership to 25-30 lakh by also enrolling members in neighboring Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Doing away with the paper receipt books, the TDP is using tablet computers up to the village level for listing members with all their details and the data will be available online on a real-time basis, which is probably the first-of-its-kind initiative by any political party.

Chandrababu's son Nara Lokesh is co-ordinating the membership programme that is currently taken up in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

"TDP is not just a political party. It has always been in the forefront in taking up service programmes for the society's good and at the same time taking care of welfare of the loyal party workers. During the last drive in 2012-14, we enrolled 18 lakh members and this time our target is to increase the membership to 25-30 lakh," Chandrababu said on the occasion.

Chandrababu said the party cadre has been the real strength of TDP in its 32 years of existence.

"We have launched the Workers' Welfare Fund with a corpus of Rs 20 crore, which no other party in the country has," the TDP chief said, adding that the amount (Rs 10 crore) collected through the membership enrollment drive would also be added to the corpus of the Welfare Fund.

TDP recently signed an MoU with Oriental Insurance Company under which each active member of the party will get a personal insurance cover of Rs 2 lakh in case of a fatal accident, Rs 2 lakh for permanent disability, Rs 1 lakh for the partially disabled, and Rs 50,000 in case of accidental injuries.