Poll promise: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday (July 10) launched payment of cash in lieu of the additional 5 kilograms of rice to beneficiaries under the state government’s ‘Anna Bhagya’ scheme.
With this, the Congress government is fulfilling one more of its five poll promises which were guaranteed ahead of the Assembly elections in May.
Confronted with problems in the procurement of large quantities of rice required for the implementation of the poll guarantee, the Siddaramaiah government decided to pay cash to beneficiaries at the rate of Rs 34 per kg, for the additional 5 kg of rice under the free rice scheme. This is applicable to every member of a BPL household and 'Antyodaya' households.
The state government said that Karnataka has 1.28 crore ration cards of 'Antyodaya Anna Yojana and Priority Households'.
According to the government, around 99 per cent of these cards are seeded with an Aadhaar number and 82 per cent (1.06 crore) of these cards are linked with active bank accounts. The cash transfer will start for these beneficiaries. The remaining ration card holders will be intimated to open new accounts.
Cash transfer to HoH
Cash will be transferred to the accounts of the head of households (HoH). The government said that 94 per cent of HoH are women and 5 per cent are men. The government has already implemented the first poll guarantee, 'Shakti' by providing free services for women in public transport buses last month.
Under the ‘Gruha Jyothi’ scheme which aims to provide 200 units of free electricity, the households have started getting benefits of the scheme from the beginning of this month. The electricity bill for the same for power consumption this month will come in the beginning of August.
The remaining two guarantees that the government is taking steps to implement soon include-- Rs 2,000 monthly assistance to the woman head of every family (Gruha Lakshmi); and Rs 3,000 every month for unemployed graduate youth and Rs 1,500 for unemployed diploma holders (Yuva Nidhi).
(With PTI inputs)
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