KCR Cheating SHGs, Owes Them Rs 4,250 Crore: Congress

Former president of the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) and Nalgonda MP N Uttam Kumar Reddy alleged today that Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao had cheated the Woman Self Help Groups (SHGs) of the state.

He was addressing the media along with TPCC working president and MLA T Jagga Reddy, All India Mahila Congress General Secretary and Telangana Mahila Congress in-charge Fatima, president of Telangana Mahila Congress Sunitha Rao, women Congress leaders Madhavi Reddy and Madhavi, and PCC General Secretary B Kishan.

Reddy alleged that the government had not paid even a single rupee towards the interests of the loans taken by the SHGs under the VLR (Vaddi Leni Runalu) scheme after KCR became the Chief Minister of the state for the second time in 2018. He said that the state government owed about Rs 4,250 crore to the SHGs of the state, and demanded that it immediately release these amounts.

"In the past two years and 10 months, the government did not pay evan a single rupee towards the interests of the loans taken by the SHGs of the state. The government needs to release Rs 2,200 crore as interest to the 3.85 lakh SHGs of the rural areas and Rs 750 crore to the 1.52 lakh SHGs of the urban areas. On the whole the government owes Rs 3,000 crore to the SHGs of the state under the VLR scheme. On top of it, the government has retained Rs 1,256 crore of premium paid by the SHGs of the state towards insurance under the Abhaya Hastam scheme. With this the total dues of the government payable to the SHGs reaches Rs 4,256 crores," he said.

Reddy said that the government owed Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 in interest to each of the 66 lakh members of the SHGs of the state, and Rs 50,000 to Rs 1.50 lakh to each SHG on average.

But let alone paying the interests of the SHGs, the government had been bringing pressure on the groups to pay the interests from their own pockets to the banks, Reddy claimed. He said that a Mandal Parishad Development Officer Sudhakar had been suspended for non-payment of interest by the SHGs of his mandal.

He also claimed that the government had not been paying ex-gratia under the Abhaya Hastam scheme to the deceased members of the SHGs. Under the scheme, the government needed to pay Rs 25,000 in case of a natural death and Rs 75,000 in case of an accidental death within 24 hours, he said.

He said that the Congress had launched the Self Help Group program to empower the women of the country, especially those living in the remote areas of the state. However, the TRS government had cheated and fooled the SHGs over the past seven years, and the public representatives and officials of all the mandals he had been visiting had been complaining on the issues of the SHG, he alleged.

Reddy asked the Telangana Women Congress to fight for the rights of the SHGs, and to pressurise the government so that the dues of the SHGs were paid.