Centre's Mudra Loans Allocation Unfair: B Vinod Kumar

Chairman of the Telangana Planning Commission (TPC), former MP Boianpalli Vinod Kumar today lashed out at the BJP-led Centre for its "partisan attitude" towards the state, and accused it of allocating loans for its Mudra scheme in an "unfair" manner.

Taking up the matter with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in a letter, he said that the Centre had adopted "dual standards" in its implementation of the loan scheme, and claimed that the "unfair" distribution of the loans among the states was the result of a "deliberate attempt to ignore Telangana".

The commission head alleged that the NDA regime's loan allocation under the scheme reflected its partisan attitude, and that this was evident through its decision to allocate the largest loans to the BJP-led states.

He also expressed his displeasure at the Centre for not providing the promised quantum of loans to the state, and claimed that though 68 lakh people in Telangana were supposed to receive the Mudra loans, the Centre had issued the loans to only 40.9 lakh people.

The former MP asked Sitharaman what the remaining 20 lakh eligible beneficiaries were supposed to do, and demanded that the requisite funds be released to the beneficiaries at the earliest.

(Since the issue of employment generation has become a flashpoint among the political leaders of the state, discussions about the Mudra loan program have also become common - recently, BJP leader and MP D Arvind lashed out at IT and Industries Minister K T Rama Rao, who had claimed that the BJP-led Centre had failed to provide 12 crore government jobs after promising to do so. On Twitter, Arvind posted that the Centre had never promised 12 crore government jobs but had assured the people that it would stimulate employment generation through the Mudra loans. He added that 55,000 persons in his constituency, Nizamabad district, had been given loans under the scheme.)

The Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana was a scheme launched by the Centre in April 2015. It aims to provide loans up to Rs 10 lakh to the non-corporate, non-farm small/micro enterprises of the nation. In the current fiscal year, the most recent statistics say that loans worth Rs 2,32,594 crore were sanctioned under the scheme.