HYDERABAD: Opposition members in the Legislative Council charged the Government with diverting funds under the SC and ST sub plans to various other schemes in violation of the SC, ST Sub Plan Act 2013.
After Minister for Scheduled Caste Development G.Jagadish Reddy reeled out statistics during a short discussion on SC and ST Sub Plans to assert that the TRS government had done much better in the last two years for SC and ST welfare than what the TDP and Congress governments had done in the combined State for 16 years, Deputy leader of the Opposition Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy said it was unfortunate that the State government merely issued a political statement.
One expected the Government would sincerely use the SC and ST Sub Plan funds for the welfare of the two communities. Yet the TRS government had resorted to diversion of ₹7,500 crore this year so far for Mission Bhagiratha and Mission Kakatiya.
The State government passed three budgets so far with over ₹3.5 lakh crore and yet enough funds were not spent on SC and ST welfare defeating the very purpose of the Act. So far not even the rules for implementing the Act were framed nor the State Advisory Council — nodal agencies mandated under the Act — constituted nor a monitoring mechanism to track spending of SC, ST funds was in place.
The government merely gave statistics of thousands of SCs and STs benefiting under various schemes without any validation, he pointed out.
Raw deal to Dalit CS
Even politically speaking, the TRS government did not keep its promise of installing a Dalit as the first Chief Minister of the State. Dalit Chief Secretary Pradeep Chandra was in the post for only one month as the government did not seriously pursue for extension of his term while the government did everything to get not one but two extensions for Mr.Rajiv Sharma, Mr.Sudhakar Reddy alleged.
BJP member N.Ramachandra Rao sought a white paper on implementation of SC, ST Sub-Plan funds and alleged the funds under the sub-plans were diverted in violation of the Act. BJP government in the Centre introduced several schemes for uplift of SCs and STs, including promoting Dalit entrepreneurs to set up industries under Stand Up India scheme. State government should promote that scheme to benefit Dalits, he said.
Government should implement reservation for Dalits based on their population ratio in jobs, promotions and regularisation of contract services, skill development programmes and protect the rights of tribals in the Agency areas.
