Hyderabad: Springing a big surprise on his political opponents, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao launched a massive scheme to extend huge financial assistance to each and every Dalit or Scheduled Caste family in the state.
Under the “Dalit Bandhu scheme”, every schedule caste family will get a generous dole of Rs1 million to economically uplift it.
Chief Minister not only announced the scheme all of a sudden during his visit to his adopted village Vasalamarri in Yadadri district, but the officials immediately started distributing the money among the Dalit residents of the village.
Under the scheme the beneficiaries were free to spend the money as they want to take up any economic activity.
Out of 1.5 million Dalit families in the state, the government has identified 1.3 million families as eligible for the financial assistance. As the Chief Minister announced that every year 100,000 to 200,000 Dalit families will be covered, it was likely to put a burden of upto Rs 200 billion on the exchequer per year. Officials said that the funds would be allocated in the state budget from the next year onwards. It will be equivalent to almost 10% of the total expenditure of the state.
To show his seriousness about the scheme the Chief Minister ensured that the Scheduled Castes Welfare Department released the formal government order immediately and released an amount of Rs76 million for the distribution among 76 Dalit families of the village.
Though several welfare measures and schemes were initiated by the governments in Indian states from time to time, never in the past any government has announced such a massive scheme for Dalits, who face a lot of social discrimination because of their identity of a lower caste in Hindu social strata.
The spending under this scheme will be in addition to various other welfare programmes in social welfare schemes including free housing, social welfare pensions, ration, free power and financial assistance for the marriage of Dalit girls.
According to sources, the reason behind the sudden implementation of the scheme was likelihood of state Election Commission issuing a notification for the by elections in Huzurabad assembly constituency in the next few days. This would have forced the government to delay the announcement.
It evoked a sharp reaction from the opposition parties including the BJP who alleged that the Chief Minister was trying to exploit Dalits politically and influence them ahead of the bypoll.
