The Hindu : Karnataka News : Power supply for borewells soon

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Wednesday, Nov 12, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka

Power supply for borewells soon

Staff Correspondent

Loan recovery cell to be set up

It is a welfare measure for Scheduled Castes
and Scheduled Tribes people
B.R. Ambedkar Development Board is implementing the project

Chitradurga: D.S. Veeraiah, chairman of the B.R. Ambedkar Development Board, has said that by December end, the Government will ensure of electricity connections to all borewells owned by beneficiaries of the Ganga Kalyan Scheme.

Addressing presspersons here on Tuesday, he said the Government had paid Rs. 16 crore to the Karnataka Electricity Board (KEB) for providing electricity connections to the borewells. The Ganga Kalyan Scheme was meant to provide borewell facilities in farmlands owned by Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) people.

To a question, he said the Board had urged the Government to release more funds for reserved constituencies so that development projects could be undertaken for the welfare of the two communities. He said that although the funds were being disbursed based on the density of the SC/ST population, the Government had been urged to allocate more for their welfare. He said the State had released Rs. 150 crore while the Union Government had released Rs. 80 crore for the development of SCs/STs.

Committees

With regard to the district, he said Rs. 3.41 crore for SCs and Rs. 3.28 crore for STs had been released from the Board. Mr. Veeraiah said the Board had planned to set up district-level committees to identify beneficiaries for the scheme and to prevent misuse of funds. The committees would be headed by the Deputy Commissioners of the district. He said the Board had the power to allocate commercial space to SCs/STs by purchasing shops from agencies such as the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee. The beneficiaries could obtain loans for setting up businesses from the Board.

“ The Board wishes to give wide publicity to this scheme as many people are unaware of this benefit”, he said.

With regard to loan recovery, he said the Board would soon set up a loan recovery cell for the purpose. He said the district was yet to recover Rs. 9 crore from various beneficiaries. The loan recovery rate was higher from self-help groups, and thus the Board was planning to concentrate on empowering SHGs more, he said.

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