Dalit Bandhu for all Dalits in next 15 months

All the Dalits in the State would be covered under the Telangana Dalit Bandhu scheme in the next 15 months, Telangana SC Co-operative Development Corporation Limited Chairman, Banda Srinivas said on Friday.

Addressing a press conference here, he said there were around 75 lakh Dalit belonging to 59 sub-castes of Scheduled Castes in the State. They will all benefit from the scheme, he said.

Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao launched the scheme after conducting a meeting with resource persons at Pragathi Bhavan in Hyderabad. Dalit families in Huzurabad Assembly constituency, where the scheme was launched on pilot basis, were now being given Rs 10 lakh.

The scheme would be implemented across the State in a phased manner. Initially poor families would be covered under the scheme and in later phases government employees would be covered and there was no need for any kind of doubts on the scheme’s implementation, Srinivas said.

The SC



Corporation Chairman refuted the allegations that Rs 10 lakh credited into the beneficiaries’ accounts was taken back. Some political parties were making false allegations against the scheme which was aimed to uplift the poor dalits in Telangana.

As part of distribution of three acres land to landless poor dalits, the State government has so far distributed around 16, 800 acres of land. Since the government was not available for distribution to dalits, the government allotted Rs 7 lakh per acre to acquire the land for distribution, he noted.

The government was also distributing self-employment units to SCs through SC Corporation and the efforts being made by the TRS government have been yielding good results in terms of dalits development, he added.

SC Corporation Executive Director, G Mutyam, District Library Director, More Bhasker Rao and Singareni SC/ST Employees Association leader, Nageshwar Rao were present.