Amaravati: In a Cabinet meeting held on Wednesday, the Andhra Pradesh government approved cancellation of the contract worth Rs 3,216.11 crore, given to Navayuga Engineering Company for construction of the Polavaram hydel power project. The previous Telugu Desam Party had granted the contract to them when they were in power.

Fresh tenders would be called through the reverse tendering process. The mobilisation advance given to the company would also be recovered.

Apart from that the Cabinet also took few key decisions including:

The Cabinet also approved the decisions to hike the salary of ASHA /community health workers from Rs 3,000 per month to Rs 10,000 per month.

The Government has also decided to clear the pending salaries and release funds related to that. The previous government had kept bills pending from January to July and released Rs 132 Crore for this.

The decision to extend the ban on Maoist extremists by one more year was also approved.

The State Cabinet has also approved the cancellation of a contract given to Machilipatnam Port Pvt Ltd as also the decision to take back 412.5 acres of land given to the company near the port town in Krishna district. The company had not started work on the project and was not paying rent either.The Industries department also mentioned that they had not paid for the lease amount for the lands , as stated in a letter to the Government.

The Cabinet has also approved of the new Sand Mining policy which will come into effect from September 5. As part of this APMDC has devised a transparent system of online booking of sand and has split 102 sand reaches into 47 schedules (with 2-3 reaches in each schedule). It has also initiated a process of reverse tendering to ensure that sand reaches stockyards.

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