Ward and village volunteer system, a wing of the YSR Congress government, has emerged as the eye of a political storm between rivals YSRCP and TDP in the run-up to the upcoming elections in Andhra Pradesh, with both ruling and opposition parties trading charges against each other. Introduced in 2019 by the ruling YSRCP, the volunteer system is a decentralised governance delivery mechanism, entailing one volunteer to oversee 50 households for delivering welfare pensions and other schemes at the beneficiaries' doorstep. However, the opposition NDA coalition of TDP, BJP and Janasena allege that the volunteer system is being deployed to further the electoral prospects of YSRCP and perform in an advantageous way to the ruling party run by Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy. TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu and Janasena chief Pawan Kalyan have regularly targeted the volunteers, numbering around 2.6 lakh over the past five years. However, after realising the sensitivity of the issue, Naidu is now tryin