Hyderabad: The Association for Socio-Economic Empowerment of the Marginalised (ASEEM) has written to the Telangana government calling on them to resolve issues in the submission of applications for economic scheme under the Telangana state minorities finance corporation (TSMFC).
The economic support scheme intends to lend subsidies with bank linkage to minorities so that they can set up business units with a view to secure social betterment, economic development and general upliftment.
The letter was addressed to Telangana minister for minorities welfare Koppula Eshwar, Minority Welfare Department’s Principal Secretary, TSMFC’s Chairman and its MD.
Addressing loopholes, Secretary of ASEEM, SQ Masood spoke about the eligibility criteria issued by the TSMFC chairman. The chairman had said that the white ration card/food security card qualified as proof but he failed to include the income certificate. The portal however, states that income certificate is mandatory.
The online portal of the Telangana State Online Beneficiary Management and Monitoring System asks for an active ration card registration and rejects the application if they don’t have the same. This, ASEEM argues, means that the food security card is treated as a primary source of income.
If the ration card goes through, the portal asks for income certificate issued by the Tahsildar as mandatory. ASEEM argues that it is “irrational and unnecessary” to ask for an income certificate after asking for the ration card. A ration card is anyway issued to a person after due verification that they have an annual income of less than 2.0 lakhs.
Choose between ration card or income certificate
In view of the above, ASEEM stated that lakhs of ration cards were canceled / deleted since 2014 on different grounds without any field level enquiry and notice to the beneficiaries. Apart from cancelled, lakhs of new ration card applications are still pending for approval.
“At this juncture, making Ration Card as mandatory for submission of the applications can deprive lakhs of eligible applicants from the benefits of this scheme,” said Masood.
ASEEM requested the state government to either ask for a ration card or an income certificate (which a candidate can obtain from their Tahsildar) as asking for both creates a lot of inconvenience, exploitation from middle men and forces poor people to pay Rs 1000, 2000 to obtain the papers.
Extend last date of submission
They also asked the government to extend the last date of submission (January 5, 2023) to a later date so that applicants can their papers in order. The last notification issued by the TSMFC only mentions two loan categories (Rs 1 lakh and Rs 2 lakh) for which bank consent is mandatory. ASEEM argued that in most cases banks are unwilling to consider minority loans due to which the applicants are denied “legitimate rights.”
Provide grant in aid to applicants
“In view of the above, this is the request to you please consider providing financial support of 50,000/- or below as grant in aid to the applicants (especially single women, widows etc) who need small investment directly, which will impact and create huge livelihood options to a large number of eligible applicants to start their businesses,” ASEEM added.
