Vijayawada: CM seeks increase in credit limit, release of dues

Vijayawada: Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy met Union home minister Amit Shah and Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on his second visit to Delhi within a fortnight, and took up several pending demands, including one to raise the state's credit limit. The Chief Minister requested both Shah and Sitharaman in separate meetings to raise the credit limit from Rs 17,923 crore to the earlier limit of Rs 42,472 crore, which he said was slashed for no fault of the southern state in 2021-22, a statement on Thursday said. This is his second visit to Delhi in a month. On March 17, he had met Prime Minster Narendra Modi and Amit Shah.

Observing that the pending issues had pushed AP backwards in terms of development and revenue, the CM asked Shah and Sitharaman in separate meetings to immediately release Rs 10,000 crore on an ad-hoc basis to expedite the Polavaram multi-purpose irrigation project.

During the meeting with Shah, the CM sought the reimbursement of Rs 2,601 crore expenditure incurred on Polavaram project and urged that the technical advisory committee's revised estimates of Rs 55,548 crore, including treating the drinking water supply component as a part of it, be accepted. Shah was apprised of the financial burden of Rs 5,527 crore that the state had incurred on supplying rations to 56 lakh families under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) due to "irrational selection of beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act".

As a result, the CM said that the state needed to be compensated by the unused ration stocks as recommended by the Niti Aayog. Reddy also appealed to the Centre to release the pending amount of Rs 36,625 under resource gap funding for the fiscal 2014-15. Likewise, in his meeting with finance minister Sitharaman, he urged her to release the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGA) arrears of Rs 2,500 crore due to AP, the statement said.  Further, Jagan Mohan Reddy appealed to Sitharaman to ensure that Telangana government clears Rs 7,058 crore outstanding dues to State power generation company APGENCO from the neighbouring state's discoms for the power supplied between 2014 and 2017.

Reddy reiterated his demand on the pending resource gap funding and ad hoc funds for Polavaram to the finance minister as well. He also requested both Union ministers to sanction another Rs 2,020 crore for filling scourge pits formed at the main dam site due to the washing away of the diaphragm wall in flash floods. Most importantly, the CM sought to remind the Centre to live up to the promise of according Special Category Status to the state.