Mumbai, Jun 25 (PTI) The Maharashtra cabinet on Thursday approved a proposal to give concessionin electricity duty for industrial consumers.

The electricity duty will now be 7.5 per cent instead of the present 9.3 per cent, a statement from the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) said.

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The state will face a revenue loss of Rs 440.46 crore annually due to the decision, but the industrial consumers will get electricity at low tariff.

In another decision, the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) workers will get a pay hike of upto Rs 2,000 from July 1.

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There are 65,740 ASHA workers in the state, it said.

The cabinet also gave approval for the conversion of the 116.15 km Nagpur-Nagbhid railway track to broad gauge from narrow gauge.

For this, Rs 280 crore share will be borne by the state government, while the Centre has to bear Rs 280 crore expenditure.

Meanwhile, the state government will stand guarantee to Rs 1,000 croreloan taken by the Cotton Marketing Federation to pay farmers for the crop procured, the statement said.

The guarantee duty to be paid by the federation has been waived.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)