Cash instead of garments disbursed through banks to beneficiaries for Pongal

Chief Minister N Rangasamy on Wednesday announced that the Adi Dravidar Welfare department has started disbursing Rs 300 to each of 92,445 adult members in the families of the scheduled castes in Puducherry, through bank accounts, to celebrate the Pongal harvest festival.

Puducherry: Chief Minister N Rangasamy on Wednesday announced that the Adi Dravidar Welfare department has started disbursing Rs 300 to each of 92,445 adult members in the families of the scheduled castes in Puducherry, through bank accounts, to celebrate the Pongal harvest festival.

At a press meet, Rangasamy said all along garments were available free of cost to the men and women in the families of the scheduled castes during Diwali or Pongal.

But the government has now decided to disburse Rs 300 each to adult members in these families for Pongal festival and the amount was being disbursed through bank accounts of the beneficiaries, he said.

The cost incurred to department on account of this in Puducherry region is around Rs 2.77 crore.

Similarly as many as 34,418 members of SC community in Karaikal and 7,300 members in Yanam region were being covered under this scheme and Rs 1.25 crore was provided to the beneficiaries in these two regions.

He said each of the 1,06,529 families belonging to Backward Class and covered under the `red colour ration card system` were being distributed Rs 600 per family instead of garments for Pongal festival in the Union Territory.

The Department of Women and Child Development was disbursing the amount through anganwadi centres and a cost of around Rs 6.39 crore was being incurred.

Rangasamy extended his Pongal festival greetings to the people on the occasion.

He described as routine some opposition Congress legislators recently meeting him, "The government is taking care of all constituencies without discrimination and hence there is no need to read between the lines in the context of the opposition MLAs meeting me," he said.

Education Minister T Thiagarajan was present during the press meet.

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