HYDERABAD: Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on Thursday directed officials to formulate an action plan to implement two more guarantees promised by the Congress during last year’s poll run-up on priority. In a meeting with Cabinet members and senior officials, Reddy discussed subsidised gas cylinders for `500 each, construction of Indiramma houses and providing 200 units of free power to domestic consumers and directed officials to make arrangements to start at least two of three guarantees. Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, ministers N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, D. Sridhar Babu and P. Srinivas Reddy took part in the meeting on the Praja Palana scheme. Revanth Reddy inquired about the financial requirement for each guarantee and the details of the number of beneficiaries, concurrently advising the finance department to allocate funds for the same in the Budget. Reddy said that he would hold another meeting with the Cabinet sub-committee before the Assembly Budget Session. While officials informed Reddy that there were multiple instances of duplicate applications and incomplete applications, the Chief Minister directed officials to re-examine them and to conduct field visits, if necessary, to verify the details. He said that details must be thoroughly checked before discarding an application to ensure no eligible beneficiary is left out. He said arrangements would be made to rectify mistakes or errors at MPDO offices or in the next Praja Palana programme. He also warned officials against imposing unnecessary rules for implementing the guarantees and said he would formulate a mechanism to ensure each applicant gets the benefit he/she is eligible for. He directed officials to ensure provisions for making the application process a continuous one to provide an opportunity to those who could not apply for benefits initially. The government received applications from people to avail of five of the Six Guarantees promised by the Congress under the Praja Palana programme held from December 28 to January 6 across the state. A total of 1,09,01,255 applications were received and officials completed data entry of all applications by January 12.
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