Brace for action, CM tells ministers

Hyderabad: Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy chalked out a two-month long action plan for the ministers and has asked them to take up the responsibility of ensuring a repeat performance of the cooperative elections during the Panchayat Raj and municipal elections. He also directed the ministers to effectively counter the agitation against the power crisis taken up by the opposition. Kiran Reddy told the ministers to get into action from April 5 and take up a massive campaign to explain the importance of the SC, ST Sub Plans to the people and how it would benefit them. This campaign would go on till April 24. The government had allocated over Rs 10,000 crore for SC, ST welfare. The Chief Minister would launch the scheme to distribute nine essential commodities on Ugadi (April 11). Also, Raitu Chaitanya Yatras will be held from April 21 to May 8.From May 10 to 15, the government will hold a Raitu Chaitanya Sadassu, where the farmers will be explained about various welfare measures the government had launched the purposes it serves. The meeting also decided that the departmental standing committee meetings would be held between April 25 and May 10 to scrutinise the demands for grants. On the issue of doing away with VAT, the Chief Minister is learnt to have said that it was the traders who had first suggested the one percent VAT be levied. He told them that he would take a call on abolishing VAT during the second phase of the budget session, which would commence sometime during last week of May. The meeting was attended by Deputy Chief Minister C Damodar Raja Narasihma, ministers Anam Ramanarayana Reddy, Ponnala Lakshmaiah, DK Aruna, Botcha Satyanarayana, P Sudarshan Reddy, P Satyanarayana. D Prasada Rao, S Sailajanath and Kondru Murali Mohan also took part in the meeting.