Southern States
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Tamil Nadu
Bus fare, power tariff reduced
By Radha Venkatesan
CHENNAI, DEC. 5. A day after Ms. Jayalalithaa overcame the legal hurdles to her return to power, the AIADMK Government ``generously'' brought down the hike in bus fare and power tariff, and restored the supply of PDS rice to all ration cardholders at Rs. 3.50 per kg.
The ``benevolent'' gift package, which comes just two days after the Chief Minister, Mr. O. Paneerselvam, firmly ruled out a rollback, includes sale of cheap IMFL liquor at Rs. 15 per 100 ml. Besides, the hike in the prices of sugar and kerosene has been completely rolled back. A fresh enumeration of cardholders to be conducted in January and February 2002 would categorise them as below poverty line (BPL) families with an annual income of Rs. 24,000 or less and above poverty line (APL) families with an income above Rs. 24,000, the Chief Minister said.
After providing new green cards to the BPL families and blue ones to the APL families by April, the supply of rice at Rs. 3.50 per kg would be restricted to the green cardholders from May.
Till then, all cardholders would be given the Rs. 3.50 a kg rice, Mr. Paneerselvam told the media, after a Cabinet meeting here today. Interestingly, the announcements came after Ms.Jayalalithaa's meeting with the Chief Minister and officials at her Poes Garden residence in the morning.
On the ``advice of the honourable Puratchi Thalaivi Amma'', the hike in power tariff was slashed and consequently, the tariff for the first slab of consumption upto 25 units would come down from Re. 1 to 85 paise per unit, Mr. Paneerselvam said.
The bus fares on the city, metro and mofussil and long-distance routes were revised to ``benefit the middle class and poor''. Accordingly, the maximum fare in the cities and the metro, which was raised to Rs. 10 in the recent hike, would be reduced to Rs. 7 from tomorrow.
For Government employees too, whose perks were considerably cut last week, there was a sop. The minimum interval for getting an advance from the General Provident Fund, which was raised to one year, was brought back to six months.
The Government which expected to raise a revenue of Rs. 3,070 crore from last week's drastic fiscal reforms, will lose about Rs. 1162 crores following the partial rollback.
The Chief Minister appealed to the Opposition parties, particularly the allies of the AIADMK, to drop the December 7 plan.
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