The Hindu : Mala Mahandu plans `Chalo Assembly'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 04, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh

Mala Mahandu plans `Chalo Assembly'

By Our Staff Reporter

CUDDAPAH March 3. The State president of Mala Mahanadu, P. V. Rao, on Monday called for a `Chalo Assembly' rally in March third week to exert pressure on the Government to fulfil an eight-point charter of demands.

Addressing a press conference here, Mr. Rao charged the Government with failing to initiate drought relief measures despite large-scale migration of labourers from villages. He said the Government failed to assess severity of drought and was being indifferent to starvation deaths by poverty-stricken farmers and agricultural labourers despite availability of lakhs of quintals of rice in the godowns. He demanded grant of a monthly drought pension of Rs. 1,000 to small farmers, agricultural labourers and artisans and free supply of rice. He sought digging of infiltration wells in Dalitawadas.

He charged the Government with trying to hush up the Rs. 100-crore scholarship scam in Hyderabad. The Social Welfare Minister, J. Pushparaj's promise to constitute special courts for enquiring into the scam was not kept, he alleged. He demanded a probe into the role of former Social Welfare Ministers in the scam, rather than merely make employees as `scapegoats'.

Demanding scrapping of the legislation for classification of SCs, he alleged that grave injustice was meted to the Mala, Relli and Adi Andhra castes in A, C and D categories of SCs in employment by the Government. He demanded formation of a separate machinery to expeditiously fill the 60,000 SC and 20,000 ST backlog posts.

Mr. Rao alleged that revenue officials were posing hurdles in issuing caste certificates to SCs in Cuddapah, Anantapur, Kurnool, Mahabubnagar and Guntur districts. Caste certificates were being denied in areas having Churches and in cases where SCs unintentionally gave Christian names to their children.

The Government officials were ignoring the Supreme Court orders that SCs who converted as Christians would continue to be SCs.

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