CHENNAI: Each poor family without a house will be provided with a concrete roofed house in rural areas and an apartment in a multi-storeyed building in urban areas, Tamil Nadu governor Banwarilal Purohit announced in the assembly on Tuesday.
In his customary address to the first session of the assembly this year, the governor said a CM helpline -- 1100 – would be launched for people to access the government from the comfort of their homes.
The state government will roll out ‘BharatNet project’ to one third of the revenue villages in the state by March 31, 2021 and the remaining villages will be covered by November 30, 2021.
A new MSME policy has been finalised and will be released by the chief minister shortly. The state action plan for senior citizens will be implemented shortly. The state minorities commission would be expanded through suitable legislation to provide representation to linguistic minorities, the governor said.
He said the state government’s action on many recommendations of the high-level expert committee led by former RBI governor of C Rangarajan is having a favourable impact on economic growth. The state is seeing strong signs of revival of the economy.
The governor said the proactive approach of the government to encourage investment in sectors critical to the pandemic response like medical equipment, protective clothing, drugs and pharmaceuticals and the efforts to attract investors seeking to relocate in the aftermath of the pandemic helped the state attract an ‘unprecedented’ Rs 60,674crore worth of investment through 73 MoUs generating employment for one lakh people, even during the pandemic period.
“The consistent focus of the Tamil Nadu government on providing good governance to the people is now widely recognised… ‘Responsiveness in governance’ is the watchword of this government,” Purohit said.
Purohit said the state government had received Rs 13,300 crore towards compensation from the Centre, including Rs 4,890 crore towards borrowings in lieu of compensation as per the mechanism put in place by the GST council. “It is a matter of satisfaction that the error that occurred in 2017-18 in the IGST allocation between the Centre and the states has been rectified and this year, Tamil Nadu has finally received its due of Rs 4,321 crore,” the governor said. The state government has incurred a total expenditure of Rs 13,208 crore so far on Covid-19 relief and response measures from its own resources.
The state government also disbursed Rs 1,715 crore directly to the bank accounts of 16.78 lakh farmers affected by the two cyclones, Nivar and Burevi, and due to the unseasonal rain in January.
The DMK, the Congress and the IUML walked out to protest the governor’s address to the assembly. The DMK later announced boycott of the entire session to oppose the governor’s inaction on the advice of the cabinet to remit the sentence of Rajiv Gandhi convicts.