Uttam seeks full fee reimbursement

Hyderabad: Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president N Uttam Kumar Reddy demanded on Saturday that the State government provide full fee reimbursement to students of Backward Classes, irrespective of their ranks.

Addressing BC Vidhyarthi Garjana here, Uttam Kumar Reddy slammed the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government for imposing restrictions on the fee reimbursement scheme.

He pointed out that the historic scheme was launched in 2008 by the then Congress government to provide fee reimbursement facility to all poor students belonging to SC, ST, BC, Minorities and also economically weaker sections of upper castes.

Uttam Kumar Reddy said of nearly 60 lakh students in Telangana, about 35 lakh students were BCs. Therefore, he said, by imposing restrictions on fee reimbursement, the TRS government had deprived lakhs of poor BC students from pursuing higher education.

Citing an instance, he said that the TRS government had introduced separate slabs of fee reimbursement for students securing below and above 10,000 rank. He said that the Congress would demand fee reimbursement without restrictions in both Legislative Assembly and Council.

He said the TRS government came to power on the promise of providing KG to PG free education. However, he said so far only 119 BC residential schools were opened with an intake of nearly 28,000 students. He asked where the remaining 35 lakh BC students should go for assistance if they wished to pursue higher education.

Uttam Kumar criticsed that the government had not cleared the dues of fee reimbursement scheme. He said the State government did not clear dues of Rs 1,600 crore for last year and about Rs 2,000 crore for this year despite having a budget of Rs 1.30 lakh crore in 2016-17 and Rs 1.39 lakh crore in 2017-18.

The TPCC chief said only the Congress could ensure political empowerment of BCs in Telangana. He asked whether any BC leader could ever become the TRS party president or Chief Minister anytime in future. But this can happen and had happened in the Congress. Uttam Kumar Reddy praised BC Welfare Association president and MLA R Krishnaiah for his services for BC welfare.

He said Krishnaiah had been fighting relentlessly for the cause of BC empowerment and everyone must support him. He also announced that the Congress would support the demand for 50 per cent political reservation for BCs in Parliament and State legislatures. The meeting was also addressed by BC Welfare Association R Krishnaiah and other BC leaders.