Hyderabad: The Telangana state government has instructed officials in districts to ensure that tight security measures are in place for the storage of 60 lakh cheques for distribution to farmers in all villages from April 19, towards Rs 4,000 per acre sop to farmers.
Cheques worth Rs 5,000 crore are being printed and supplied by eight banks to all districts. The government has asked officials to store these cheques in police stations, banks and treasury offices.
The government is spending nearly Rs 140 for printing each “customi-sed cheque” on which the logo of the Telanga-na state government, name of the farmer, extent of land owned, sop amount, unique ID number and Aadhaar number are being printed.
The banks have set up special counters in their head offices in the city to distribute cheques to the agriculture department. The department, in turn, is sorting out these cheques village-wise, mandal-wise and distri-ct-wise, and transporti-ng them to all districts accordingly. It has purchased thousands of tru-nk boxes to transport cheques.
Since these cheques are transported to interior villages and Agency areas, the agriculture department has expre-ssed security concerns during transportation, storage and distribution. The government has entrusted the responsibility to collectors and SPs in respective districts to take the necessary security measures.
The cheques are being distributed in phases from April 19 to May 31, village-wise in alphabetical order, and hence, there is a need to store lakhs of cheques in districts during this period. Any damage, misuse or manipulation of these cheques during transportation, storage and distribution would cause a huge loss to state exche-quer besides troubling farmers.
These cheques will have a validity period of three months to encash. Unclaimed cheques, if any, will be stored in villages for three months and officials will need to provide adequate security at these centres. The cheques will be distributed by conducting gram sabhas in each village and the schedule for ea-ch village will be announced a week in advance.
