Chennai, Aug 5 (IANS) Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa Friday said the ruling AIADMK would hold public meetings in all the 234 assembly constituencies, highlighting the features of the state budget for 2011-12.


"The budget presented in the assembly (Thursday) for 2011-12 has several features for people's welfare," Jayalalithaa said in a statement here.

"In order to explain them to the people, the party will organise public meetings Aug 12 and 13 in all the assembly constituencies," she added.

The AIADMK general secretary said the venue and the speaker list will be announced in the party's news organ Namadu MGR. She asked the party legislators to participate in the meetings and address the people.

Tamil Nadu Finance Minister O. Pannerselvam Thursday presented the state budget for this fiscal, setting aside Rs.8,900 crore for freebies such as laptops, fans, mixers, cattle, rice and gold, as promised in the run-up to the April elections.

He said allocations have been made to distribute 912,000 laptops to students and 60,000 solar powered green houses during the current fiscal, apart from handing over fans, mixers, grinders and even cattle to the needy.

These doles are over and above the provisions for opening fixed deposits for poor students, food subsidy, maternity assistance and gold for poor girls to buy "mangalsutras" at the time of their marriage.

Pannerselvam also announced Rs.3,000 crore farm loans by cooperative societies, free sanitary napkins for rural adolescent girls, induction of 3,000 more buses, construction of over 2,400 houses by the state housing board and new hostels for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students.