Siddipet Assembly constituency in Telangana will be the first “model of cashless transactions” in the next one or two months, the State Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao announced. The model will allow cash transaction only upto `500 initially and later it will be replaced by hundred percent cashless transaction. It will be modeled on the Akodara village in Gujarat.

Briefing the media after the Cabinet meeting discussed the ramifications of the demonetisation of `500 and `1000 currency notes by the Center, the Chief Minister said that as part of efforts to promote the cashless transactions, the state government will soon introduce the “TS-Wallet”.

KCR, who was earlier critical of the demonetisation because of the steep declined in the revenue but later turned a supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s move, said, “why should we oppose the demonetisation blindlyIJ The country should become corruption free and demonetisation will do good for the society”, he said.

He hoped that the efforts being made by the Center will lead to a total revolution against the black money. that if the state had to survive the demonetisation, it has to become a cashless at the earliest. “Information Technology department was working on the TS-Wallet App and it will be introduced soon for the government and the private transactions”, he said.

The Government will also provide swapping machines in all the revenue earning departments to enable people to use the net banking facilities of mobile apps. In a related move the State Cabinet decided to take up the two-bedroom flats scheme for the poor in Hyderabad at a cost of  `5000 crore to extend a helping hand to the real estate sector which was reeling under the impact of the demonetisation leading to loss of thousands of jobs  across the State.

KCR also hoped that with the cashless system becoming norm the income tax will be abolished from the country and there will be only two taxes, the Goods and Services Tax and the Bank Transaction Tax. “if the BTT was just 0.25%, the income of the enter will go up by four to five times and the states will get a proportionate share in the Central income”, he hoped.

After Nitish Kumar of Bihar, KCR is the second Chief Minister from a non NDA party to openly extend support to Modi’s demonetization move.

His support has come as a surprise as initially he had expressed his concern over the impart of the currency ban on the state revenue and had called on the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi to discuss the ramifications.

A team of officials deputed by the Central government to visit the state to study the implications of the demonetization was informed by the state government that Telangana had suffered a loss of Rs 3000 crore in its revenue due to the move.

However at the political level KCR gradually changed his stand with many in the party arguing that there was no point in confrontation with the Centre on the currency issue when there was no likelihood of going back on it.

 RS 2000 NOTES WIll BE SCRAPPED

 Significantly the Chief Minister KCR also predicted that the new RS 2000 currency notes will be scrapped anytime as they were not conducive to fight the black money. He also demanded that the PM should dismantle the black money in all the forms including the jewelry, foreign currency and shares to make demonetization work.

Meanwhile in the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu expressed his happiness over being offered an opportunity by the Center to head the panel of Chief Ministers on demoetization. “Glad to have received Centre’s call to head the committee of CMs to look in to the issues following #demonetisation”, Naidu tweeted on Tuesday.