Santosh Patnaik
Vijayawada: The State Cabinet on Friday approved spending Rs.23,000 crore for distributing house site pattas to the homeless poor.
The Cabinet, chaired by Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, gave it’s a nod to pay crop insurance for 2019-20 Kharif season by crediting Rs. 1,227.77 crore into farmers’ accounts on December 15. House pattas will be distributed in a big way on December 25.
Briefing media at Tadepalli near here, Agriculture Minister Kurasala Kannababu said that the Cabinet cleared proposal to distribute 30,60,000 house-site pattas on December 25, costing Rs. 23,000 crore. He stated that the construction of the houses would start on the same day, with a target to complete 16 lakh houses in 8,494 layouts under phase one by June, 2022, at a cost of Rs. 1.80 lakh per unit.
D-Forms will be given for house site lands under litigation and after the court clearance. Instead a convenience deed will be given. For this project, the State Government pooled 66,518 acres across the State including the government and private lands.
To empower women and strengthen the dairy sector in the State, the Cabinet approved AP Amul Project, which is scheduled for launch on December 2.
In the first phase, the project will take place in 400 villages of Kadapa, Chittoor, and Prakasam districts, where around 9,899 bulk milk chilling units will also be established. To empower women, for interested beneficiaries of Cheyutha and Aasara scheme cattle, goats and sheep will be distributed on December 10.
Kannababu said the State Government had borne the entire premium for crop insurance without even charging one rupee from farmers and Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy will be crediting Rs. 1227 crore directly to the beneficiaries’ accounts towards 2019 Kharif crop insurance.
He said that between 2016-19, in a span of three years, farmers paid a premium of Rs. 871.26 crore, and for 2019 Kharif the State Government had borne the entire premium of Rs. 1030.74 crore.
While only 60.84 lakh farmers have availed crop insurance of Rs. 37,453.79 crore between 2016-19, in 2019-20 nearly 58.77 lakh farmers were brought under crop insurance worth Rs. 37,721.57 crore.
In addition to these, the Cabinet has approved to change the system of levying of property tax from annual rental value basis to capital value system.
In the new system, the percentage of tax so fixed, is between 0.10% and 0.50% of the capital value for residential buildings and it’s between 0.2% to 2% of the capital value for non- residential buildings and only Rs. 50 is levied as property tax for houses of below poverty line (BPL) families.
