Anantapur: Chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu lashed out at the YSRC and Congress for not taking up the fight for Special Category Status for the state with sincerity. “If they had sincerity, they would never have allowed the GST bill to get cleared in the Rajya Sabha,” Mr Naidu said.
Launching a loan waiver scheme for silk weavers -- similar to one for farmers -- at Dharmavaram in the district on Saturday, the Chief Minister handed over a cheque of Rs 110 crore for the purpose, which would benefit more than 10,000 weavers in the district who were ridden with unpaid debt and suffering hefty losses. He said that a mega cheque of Rs 110.96 crore would be disbursed to handloom weavers too.
About 23,525 handloom weavers would benefit from the loan waiver scheme. He also planned to award a mega cheque of Rs 25 crore for disbursal to 27,703 silk weavers through the Sericulture department. A total of Rs 301 crore was intended to be distributed during the Dharmavaram programme. Speaking at a public meeting, Mr Naidu said that the Telugu Desam was committed to making a genuine demand for Special Category Status for the state.
“We will surely get packages from the Centre as the Prime Minister assured us that he would consider granting the pending sop,” he added. The Chief Minister also laid the foundation stone for several projects in Dharmavaram. Other programmes that he took part in at Dharmavaram included launching the Farmer Producer Organisations at BK Samudram to improve the market facility for farmers to enable them to sell their produce to big companies.
