In the wake of change in the budget pattern proposed by the Centre for a uniform format across all the States and the decision to do away with the Plan and Non-Plan budget, Telangana government has decided to amend the SC and ST Sub-Plans, 2013, accordingly.
The annual budget for 2017-18 in line with the new format will have two main components - revenue and capital expenditure and the effort of the government would be to ensure that the objective of the SC, ST Sub plan Act is not compromised.
The Act stipulated that SC and ST categories should have allocation in the overall plan budget in proportion to their respective population in the State. In the absence of Plan budget, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhara Rao directed the two committees constituted for comprehensive development of SCs and STs to come out with proposals to amend the Act suitably.
The SC committee headed by Deputy Chief Minister Kadiyam Srihari and ST commitee headed by Tribal Welfare Minister Chandulal and Jagadish Reddy and MPs, MLAs and MLCs of the two communities attended the first meeting here on Monday.
The deliberations were mainly on how to allocate funds for SC, STs, welfare scheme wise or project-wise. They would meet again on February 4 and 10 and submit a report before budget session.
The Committees would keep in mind the directive of the Chief Minister to give top priority for education of SCs and STs as it would be the pre-requisite for their overall development. In the absence of Plan allocation, government is contemplating to monitor the expenditure on schemes and facilities meant for SC and STs and ensure it will be in proportion to their population ratio. State Government has already rolled out plans to start 103 new residential schools and together with social welfare hostels, the overall number of institutions will be 260.
The ultimate goal is to set up one residential school for SCs in each of 550 plus mandals. For STs, overall 894 welfare hostels are there in the State and they would be either upgraded or merged into residential schools and where none existed, new residential schools would be set up. It would depend on the need and geography, sources said.
At present 95,000 SC students were in social welfare hostels.
