Budagajangam Yuvajana Vidyarthi Sangham (BYVS) on Tuesday commenced the Budagajangam Melukolupu Yatra, demanding reservation for the community.
Speaking on the occasion, Sangham State president Tatikonda Narayana and youth wing president Thurpati Manohar urged Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu to constitute a one-man commission to ascertain the economic status, poverty, backwardness and illiteracy among the migrant community.
As part of the yatra, Sangham activists will distribute pamphlets to create awareness about the appalling conditions in which people of the community lived and gear them up for an agitation, Mr. Narayana and Mr. Manohar said.
Relay hunger strike would be launched from Dasara festival to assert the rights of Budagajangam community and indefinite hunger strike would be launched subsequently if the Government continued to be apathetic, they warned.
Nomadic community
Budagajangam community was a nomadic community mainly eking out a living by begging and bogged down by strange customs and performing burra katha and yakshaganam, they said. Women of the community weave palm mats and trade in old clothes and plastic goods. The community was placed in the Scheduled Caste under the 1976 Act but the Andhra Pradesh Government has withdrawn reservation to the community post-bifurcation, they lamented.
Under pressure from some vested interests, a legislation was enacted recognising Budagajangam persons as SCs in Telangana alone, they asserted.
Thereafter, the SC certificates issued by revenue authorities between 1998 and 2008 were termed as bogus and stand cancelled, they lamented.
Sangham district president Sunkanna and leaders C. Fakirappa, K. Gokari, Rangaswamy, R. Srinivasulu, Madhu and Venkatesh participated.
