More than 1.75 lakh loans worth ₹311.02 crore — that is the scale of micro-credit now flowing to street vendors in Hyderabad and Secunderabad, and Union Coal and Mines Minister G. Kishan Reddy wants every voter in Telangana to know it. In a post on X on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, the BJP Telangana state president spotlighted the PM SVANidhi scheme's latest figures as evidence of inclusive growth reaching the informal economy's front lines.

₹311 crore in collateral-free credit — and 66% of it going to women

The numbers Kishan Reddy cites are striking in their detail. As of September 30, 2026, the scheme has benefited over 1.03 lakh street vendors in the twin cities — and the gender breakdown stands out: 66% of beneficiaries are women. For a workforce that has historically been locked out of formal banking, that figure signals a structural shift, not just a welfare handout.

Beyond credit, the scheme is pushing digital adoption hard. More than 88,610 vendors are now digitally active, processing payments through UPI and other platforms — a direct link to the broader Atmanirbhar Bharat push for cashless transactions at the grassroots.

PM SVANidhi's origins: a COVID-era lifeline that outlasted the crisis

PM SVANidhi — PM Street Vendor's AtmaNirbhar Nidhi — was launched on June 1, 2020, as part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat package. The immediate trigger was the COVID-19 lockdown, which had wiped out the daily earnings of millions of pavement vendors overnight. The design was deliberately simple: collateral-free working capital loans, beginning at ₹10,000, with higher-tier credit unlocked by timely repayment and digital transaction incentives.

Six years on, the scheme has moved well past emergency relief. Its architecture now functions as a formal-credit on-ramp for one of India's largest informal labour categories — the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), which owns the scheme, tracks disbursements through urban local bodies across every state.

Why Kishan Reddy is amplifying this in Telangana right now

Kishan Reddy's decision to anchor the message in Hyderabad and Secunderabad — the political and commercial heartland of Telangana — is deliberate. As the BJP's state president, he has been working to build a central-government-delivery narrative in a state governed by a rival party. Street vendors, auto-drivers, and daily-wage workers are a significant vote bloc in both cities, and a scheme that has disbursed over ₹311 crore locally gives him a concrete ledger to campaign on.

The tag to @MoHUA_India in the post also signals coordination with the implementing ministry — framing this as institutional delivery, not just political messaging.

When a welfare scheme outlives the emergency that spawned it and starts rewriting the credit histories of women street vendors at scale, it stops being a footnote — and Kishan Reddy is betting Hyderabad's pavements know the difference.