Telangana: Special Assembly session on Dalit Bandhu by October

Hyderabad: A brief monsoon session of the State Assembly is likely to be convened around the end of September or the first week of October. This session assumes importance as Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao wants to dedicate major part of the session for discussion on the Dalit Bandhu scheme and see that it gets statutory status on the lines of SC and ST Sub-Plan.

This, it is felt, will help in ensuring allocation of funds every year and check the diversion of unutilized resources. The scheme apart from the objective of economic empowerment is also going to be a major political weapon not only for the Huzurabad bypoll, but also for the next general election.

Preparations were already under progress to introduce a bill giving statutory status to Dalit Bandhu, officials said.

As per the Sakala Kutumba Survey (SKS), more than 80 per cent of 17 lakh SC families were struggling hard for livelihoods. It requires more than Rs 1.4 lakh crore to provide Rs 10 lakh financial assistance to each of the poor Dalit families to take up self-employment programmes like cab services, dairy units, buying farm equipment and so on.

"Since the government is giving top priority to Dalit Bandhu, the CM wanted to introduce a law which ensures funds are utilised in letter and spirit without diversion and the unutilised funds carry forward so that there is no fund crisis to implement the scheme on a mission mode," said a senior official.