Chennai, Mar 24 (PTI) Tamil Nadu is not a poor state but a developed one with over 90 per cent of the families owning cell phones and more than 75 per cent of the families living in their own houses, said Finance and Human Resources Management Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan on Thursday.
Of the 75 per cent families owning houses, 90 per cent lived in rural areas while 60 per cent were in the cities.
“What is surprising is that 14 per cent among them say they live in houses either built for them or in accommodation provided by the government,” he said while winding up the debate on budget 2022-23, which he presented in the Assembly House on March 18.
The Minister claimed that 66 per cent of households have two-wheelers, constituting to over 2.6 crore two-wheeler population in the state.
“More than 50 per cent of the families have fridges,” Thiaga Rajan said and asserted that Tamil Nadu is not a poor state but a developed one.
Quoting statistics, he said 52 per cent of the people, including a large number of women, are not in workforce. “Our aim is to make them employable. Also, we have an ageing population with 15 percent of the elders living in rural areas while 10 percent live in urban areas,” he said. These elderly citizens are in dire need of medical and financial assistance and they desire for companionship.
“As Chief Minister M K Stalin has pointed out, we are confronted with the problem of regional disparity in many sectors. Not all eligible elders get the same amount of pension and destitute among them forfeit the old-age pension sum as they could not fill the forms or no one is around to help them,” the Minister said.
He claimed that the state was facing a biggest challenge through the GST wherein its “financial autonomy has been taken away.” Training his guns on the opposition AIADMK, the Minister accused that party of drastically weakening Tamil Nadu’s fiscal position due to administrative incompetence. The situation worsened post the death of late chief minister J Jayalalithaa, he alleged and claimed that even before the pandemic the then AIADMK government had projected a state revenue of only Rs 800 crore.
“The administrative incompetence and wrong policies had weakened the fiscal position of the state further. AIADMK’s deputy leader O Panneerselvam who criticised our Budget should have been here for the reply,” Thiaga Rajan said.
He claimed a fiscal path is being laid out by the DMK government to reduce the revenue deficit in a phased manner.
The Finance Minister informed that a detailed project report (DPR) for the phase I of the Metrorail project for Coimbatore has been readied and a public hearing would be held soon.
“The feasibility study for the Metrorail project for Madurai is apace and we hope to get the report by May,” Thiaga Rajan added. PTI JSP SS SS
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Source: The Print
