Ballari: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah commenced the campaign for the ruling Congress for forthcoming zilla and panchayat elections by appealing to the people to vote for his party and to help the government serve them better during the rest of the term of his government.
Speaking after launching a slew of developmental works and dedicating few other infrastructure projects to the state, Mr Siddaramaiah said his government has tabled an amendment to Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act during the ongoing legislature session as it was committed to empowering the masses through decentralization of power and thus help realize the dream of Mahatma Gandhi. In fact, his government has implemented more than 100 of the 165 promises made in the Congress manifesto ahead of polls to the Legislative Assembly in 2013, and would complete the rest with allocations during budgets to be presented during the next three years, he added.
As part of empowering the downtrodden, the Chief Minister said as many as Rs 16,326 crores were allocated for the welfare of members of these communities under the Karnataka Scheduled Castes Sub-plan and Tribal Sub-plan (SCSP and TSP) which is almost double the allocation by the previous BJP government. A similar policy was earlier introduced in Andhra Pradesh, but Karnataka modified it further to ensure effective implementation of the schemes meant for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.“We have taken a revolutionary step by allocating large amount of funds under the SCSP and TSP schemes. Let opposition parties brand me as pro-Ahinda Chief Minister, but I am not bothered. I am in favour of people who were suppressed for centuries,” he added.
He explained the limitations of the state government to deal with the drought situation and power crisis owing to failure of the monsoon. “It is difficult to deal with problems which arise out of natural calamities, but still we are doing our best to solve the power crisis. We have already decided to ensure power supply for eight hours every alternative day and this crisis will end by March 2018. Then we expect addition of 2200 MW to the state’s grid”, he added.
When a farmer from among those in the audience wanted the Chief Minister to announce waiver of farm loans sanctioned by public sector banks, Mr Siddaramaiah said his government has already announced several incentives for farmers in drought-hit areas, and would continue to do so. Expressing his government’s inability to waive such loans, he revealed that grants from the Union government under various heads had come down by Rs 4, 690 crore as compared to the grants sanctioned the previous year. Appealing to farmers not to commit suicide in view of the drought, he said the state suffered a loss of Rs 16, 000 crores due to drought and had sought an assistance of Rs 3,650 crore from the Union government.
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