CM inaugurates 'Praja Patham'

Chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, while inaugurating penta-dimensional 'Praja Patham' programme at Nuzvid on Sunday, said the scheme would identify villages and towns facing acute drinking water scarcity and check whether jobless rural poor like peasants, small farmers and artisans, were migrating to other places in search of livelihood.

The exercise would also find out if farmers were receiving 7-hour power supply, self-help women groups were getting financial help at 0.25 per cent interest, and whether all eligible people in villages received ration cards.

Reddy said MLAs, MPs and other people's representatives and officials would visit 20,000 panchayats and 130 towns from April 10-28, to get a first-hand knowledge of their problems, take on the spot decisions and solve them. Praja Patham would cover villages, not taken up under the Indiramma scheme.

He announced allocation of Rs 200 crore to DWCRA women under micro finance in Krishna district for 2006-07, and said Rs 90 crore had been disbursed to these women groups in 2005-06 and Rs 42 crore in 2004-05. The chief minister also laid the foundation stone for a housing colony, and distributed pensions, house site pattas, and loans to women SHGs.

Reddy said that the state had sought Rs 2,500 crore from the World Bank for modernising Nagarjuna Sagar and providing irrigation to tail-end areas like Nuzvid in Krishna, Guntur, and Prakasam districts. He instructed officials to fill parched tanks and reservoirs in the district with water from Nagarjuna Sagar till end of this month and save the growing crops.

According to him, power consumption has jumped to 15 crore units per day, valued at Rs 40 crore. The government had purchased power on a daily basis from other states, paying them Rs 5 crore and supplied it to farmers till a couple of days ago.

He said that though the government was ready to purchase the required power at Rs 7 crore per day, it was not available in any grid. However, the government would save existing crops in state, if necessary, by cutting down power supply to households and industries.

He advised farmers to fix capacitors to stabilise their motors during low voltage power supply. Only 32 per cent farmers have so far fixed capacitors to their motors in Krishna district. A capacitor costs only Rs 250-300. If a motor is burnt due to low voltage, the farmers have to spend Rs 2,000 on repairs. In Ranga Reddy district, DWCRA women convinced farmers to fix capacitors to 930 borewells. These women purchased motors and supplied them to the latter.

Earlier, the chief minister declared open the programme in Ranga Reddy district.