BHOPAL: CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Monday in his address to the Motion of Thanks to the Governor's address announced a waiver of electricity bills that were deferred during the corona period and also hiked the MLA local area development fund from Rs 2 crore to Rs 3 crore.
Chouhan said that consumers, who have paid the bills during Corona period, will also benefit from waiver. The amount they paid will be adjusted in the bills of the coming months. It will come as a huge relief to people.
The CM also announced raising the MLAs local area development (MLALAD) funds from Rs 2 crore to Rs 3 crore. They will continue to have discretionary funds of Rs 50 lakh, which the state provided to them during the Corona period, he said.
The chief minister said that 'lured by the loan waiver scheme of the Congress', many farmers had stopped repaying their farm debt and have thus become defaulters. The state governmentwill pay the amount of interest on the loan, which they had not paid, Chouhan announced.
In a free flowing speech amidst disruptions from the Opposition MLAs, Chouhan touched upon several issues including financial condition of the state, welfare schemes of the centre /state government and commitment of his government to provide houses to everyone, tap water to every household, remunerative prices to farmers of their crops, good education to every child, economic and socio-political empowerment of women, remunerative prices to farmers , jobs to youths and proper treatment to everyone in the event of illness.
The CM announced that marks in the physical fitness test will have equal weightage as a written test in the recruitment of police and said there would soon be recruitment in the police force of the state in large numbers. Senior Congress MLA Govind Singh had given a suggestion that physical fitness in police recruitment should get more importance, which is right, he said.
Talking about the financial condition of the state, he said that in the last 10 years, gross domestic product (GDP) has grown by 200%, and the share of MP in the GDP of the country has increased from 3.6% to 4.6%.
The GDP of Madhya Pradesh as of now is Rs 11,000 crore, he said. Exports from the state have grown 14 times - from Rs 90 crore 10 years ago to Rs 1,293 crore now.
Irrigation potential in the state has risen to 43 lakh acre, electricity production has increased by 263% and milk production by 337%, share of women self-help groups in the state's economy has gone up from Rs 4,000 crore to Rs 20,000 crore. Chouhan said there is a debt burden on the state government, but the amount of debt has not been squandered but fruitfully utilised. He said that the per capita income of the state, which was Rs 15,000 a decade ago, has risen to Rs 1,24,000.
