Hyderabad: Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on Monday constituted a Cabinet subcommittee headed by his deputy, Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, to speed up the implementation of Six Guarantees promised by Congress in the run-up to the recent Assembly polls.
Revanth Reddy reiterated that the Congress government was committed to implementing all the Six Guarantees within 100 days, as promised.
He chaired a review meeting at the Secretariat on the Praja Palana programme, held by the state government from December 28 to January 6 to seek offline applications from people across the state to avail of benefits under five of the Six Guarantees.
Over 1.25 crore applications were received and the Chief Minister directed officials to make online entries of all the applications by January 25 by linking them with ID cards, such as Aadhaar, voter ID and ration cards, to ensure that only those Telangana state residents could avail of these benefits.
Officials informed the Chief Minister that a large number of applications were received for the Rs.2,500 monthly aid for women under the Maha Lakshmi scheme, Indiramma houses and ration cards. The Chief Minister wanted the implementation of two more schemes, of providing gas cylinders for Rs.500 and the Gruha Jyothi scheme to extend free power up to 200 units to each household.
The Cabinet subcommittee led by Bhatti Vikramarka has been asked to draft the guidelines for the selection of beneficiaries, with ministers D. Sridhar Babu and Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy appointed as members of the committee, alongside senior officials.
Briefing the media about the details of the review meeting, ministers Srinivas Reddy and Ponnam Prabhakar said that the Chief Minister issued strict instructions to officials to upload the details of all the 1.25 crore applications online by January 25.
Srinivas Reddy said that 30,000 data entry operators were deployed for the purpose and they expect to complete them on time. Of the 1.25 crore applications, about 1.05 crore pertain to benefits under five guarantees, while the remaining 20 lakh pertain to other schemes, mostly ration cards.
Ponnam Prabhakar said that the government will decide on issuing new ration cards after the data entry process concludes.
Both ministers lashed out at BRS leaders for accusing the Congress government of not fulfilling the poll promises, ignoring the fact that the Congress government just completed one month in office and started implementing two guarantees, of free bus travel for women and Rs.10 lakh Aarogyasri cover for poor.
They asked BRS leaders to retrospect how they had performed in the past nine years and how they failed to fulfil their poll promises even after remaining in power for nearly 10 years.
