Maha Congress reaches out to over 3.50 mn with food, aid

The Disaster Cell of Congress' Maharashtra unit has directly reached out to over 3.50 mn people in the state and provided them with food, aid and other help during the lockdown, state Working President Nitin Raut said here on Wednesday.Raut said that the state government's decision to reduce electricity rates last month would boost business and industry besides helping domestic consumers in these difficult times.

The Disaster Cell of Congress' Maharashtra unit has directly reached out to over 3.50 mn people in the state and provided them with food, aid and other help during the lockdown, state Working President Nitin Raut said here on Wednesday.

While 1.83 million have been given rations and essential supplies, another 1.66 million were provided with medicines, sanitisers, masks, etc, besides Congress workers feeding more than 60,000 people daily across the state, said Raut, who is also the state Power Minister.

"We have also helped over 110,000 migrants from different states stranded in Maharashtra due to the lockdown with whatever assistance they needed," he said in an online press conference.

Additionally, the party has distributed 5,000 PPE kits to doctors, police personnel and other frontline workers battling the Covid-19 pandemic and launched mobile health clinics in Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune, Kolhapur and Sangli, he added.

Over 20,000 Congress activists donated blood at various camps and collected more than 14,000 bags of blood needed for the patients in the pandemic.

Raut said that the state government's decision to reduce electricity rates last month would boost business and industry besides helping domestic consumers in these difficult times.

The move was taken in coordination with the main electric suppliers - MahaVitaran, Adani, Tata and BEST, who agreed to reduce their rates.

In a significant move last month, the government slashed electricity rates by average 7 percent which came to 5 percent for domestic users, and 10-15 percent for industrial and commercial consumers in the state, besides waiving off the fixed charges for the next month.

The state did not hike the charges for agricultural users or rooftop solar power users while waiving off solar grid support charges.

( With inputs from IANS )