- TANA Prospective candidates “bought” a lot of votes and enrolled a number of members to help them win 2017 elections.
- NRI’s are disappointed with the election facade of all Telugu Organizations. It brings into question the real motive of these service organizations.
For any one familiar with TANA election process (or for that matter any Telugu association), prospective candidates or their associates taking (in some cases stealing) blank ballots from mailboxes is all too familiar. In fact, some of the TANA members do not know that they ever received a ballot. Contestants for President and other posts sponsor memberships and demand blank ballots cometh the election time. (To TANA’s credit, they have changed the bylaws to take memberships fees with credit cards where address matches home address, but contestants still find innovative ways — paying back with gift cards etc).
This year, these “paid votes” concept has gone to a different level. As per sources, in places such as Georgia, contestants for this year’s TANA elections enrolled a number of members without even the members knowledge. As per Telugu360 sources, these contestants got the details from local organizations and enrolled members directly without the knowledge of the enrollee. This abnormal spurt came to the notice of TANA Executive Committee, but we hear that most of these “members” are now validated and eligible for voting in 2017 elections.
Chowdary Jampala confirmed to Telugu360 that a total of 7151 applications were received in October and November and there was a net gain of 10, 859 during those two months. Another community leader, who preferred to remain anonymous averred to the fact that more than 80% of these memberships were “sponsored”.
As can be seen below, number of TANA members that were eligible to vote at end of 2014 in GA were 496. But In matter of a week in Nov’2016 1593 members enrolled a 300% increase (all these were not validated at that point). This is a common trend in few other states. The membership fees for most of those new members are paid out by a TANA Member, who is aspiring for a top post (Yes, this is no different than buying votes in India).
TANA is a service organization which has a good reputation in the NRI community. No prizes for guessing why contestants are shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to grab top posts.
Do you think it is just for service??
TANA Enrollment details as of 11/30/2016 (~15% of enrollees were not verified)
