The alliance of Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) on Sunday announced its second big promise ‘Yuva Shakti Card’ ahead of the assembly elections. Targeting the youth of Goa in the age group of 18 to 45 years, the scheme provides a credit of Rs 20 lakh at 4 per cent interest to the government as guarantor.
Announcing the scheme on Sunday, Goa TMC leader Kiran Kandolkar said that youth constitute almost half of the state’s population. “The population in the age group of 18 to 45 in Goa is 7.5 lakh. Many times they are not able to get higher education because the financial condition of their parents is not very good. Sometimes parents mortgage their house to take loan and students bear that burden through their education. Sometimes the ancestral house becomes the name of different members of the family and it becomes difficult to mortgage the house for the education of a child. People have to find someone to stand as a guarantor to get the loan. But there will be no collateral in this scheme. The government will be the guarantor,” he said.
TMC said that the objective of the scheme is to provide financial assistance to those who want either to pursue higher education or to set up or strengthen their business.
TMC spokesperson Saket Gokhale said that there is no restriction on the scheme that the student can pursue higher education or set up his own business, as long as the person availing the scheme is from Goa.
This means Goa students wishing to pursue education abroad or in other states can also take advantage of the universal coverage scheme, with no income cut-off, he said.
MGP senior leader and MLA Dhavalikar said that under financial management in the state BJP The government has been “third class” and if corruption in the government stops, not only schemes like Yuva Shakti and Griha Lakshmi, the government will be able to meet every need of every Goa.
He said a TMC-MGP government would have the capability to do so. He said that the Yuva Shakti Card would also help the farmers of the state, who had suffered losses in Cyclone Tauta, as well as small businessmen to stand on their feet.
“It is a credit scheme. The youth of Goa are not Nirav Modi Or Mehul Choksi. We are hopeful and we know that the youth of Goa will repay their debt honestly. In terms of budget outlay, Rs 35,000 crore is stolen from Goa by a group of mining companies. This is in the report of the Shah Commission and the same has been observed by the Supreme Court. The maximum outlay for the scheme is Rs 1,100 crore. If corruption was to be exposed and money was withdrawn, much more could have been done. This is a very small part of it,” Gokhale said.
This is the second major scheme announced by the TMC ahead of the assembly elections. The first was the Griha Lakshmi scheme under which a woman in every household would be eligible to receive Rs 5,000 per month from the government. So far more than one lakh registrations have been done in Griha Lakshmi Yojana and registration for Yuva Shakti Yojana has started from Sunday. TMC leader Alexo Reginaldo Lourenco asked as many people as possible to register before the Model Code of Conduct comes into force.
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