AP govt completes 2 years in power

The Congress government completed two years in power in Andhra Pradesh with Chief Minister Dr Y S Rajasekhar Reddy announcing more sops for the people at a day-long state meet on Sunday.

Dr Reddy said his government would make all efforts to provide medical insurance facility to all the poor people who are facing many difficulties in securing medi-care in the state.

"We are keen on providing proper medicare to all the poorer sections in the state. The government is having discussions with the central government to work out a viable medical insurance scheme for the poor. There is a proposal to provide two-thirds of the insurance premium amount by the state and central governments, while the beneficiaries would have to pay only a third of the premium," he said and expressed the hope that within the next few months, the scheme would take a concrete shape.

He announced two more sops for the people, with an eye on the panchayat raj elections being held in June this year. He declared that the government has decided to lift the cases booked against more than 10,000 farmers during the previous Telugu Desam regime for alleged power theft.

He said that the government would pay the penalty on behalf of the farmers.

He also announced that the government would give power reconnections to households in Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe colonies. He said that some people had utilised the facility of waiver of surcharge and payment of power bill arrears in 20 installments, but many more had failed to do so. Hence, the government, keeping their hardships in mind, has decided to increase the number of installments to 40 and ordered the officials to give reconnection to such households immediately.

Dr Reddy, who started his tenure with fulfilling the major election promise of providing free power to the agriculture sector, said that he was fulfilling two more election promises relating to power.

He recounted the various programmes and initiatives taken up by the government during the last two years to provide relief to the under-privileged sections.

He said that the pensions to the aged, widows, physically handicapped and weavers had been hiked last year and again this year.