HYDERABAD: Sending the mercury shooting up in a political barometer, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao announced a pilot programme as part of the Telangana Dalita Bandhu — a scheme intended for SC empowerment — for the Huzurabad Assembly constituency, where a byelection is due and KCR’s former comrade-in-arms Eatala Rajender would be in the fray on behalf of the BJP.
Though no one knows when the Election Commission of India would announce the byelection dates, the leaders of the Opposition parties are already in the battlefield, flexing their muscles. The BJP and the TRS have hit the streets of the constituency, while the Congress is finalising its strategy.
During a review meeting at Pragati Bhavan here on Sunday, the Chief Minister, apparently intent on having an early-mover advantage, sought to woo SCs by allocating a whopping Rs 1,500 crore to Rs 2,000 crore, in addition to the full-scale Dalit Bandhu scheme meant for the entire State, for which the allocation is surprisingly less at Rs 1,200 crore. The date of commencement of the pilot programme would be announced by the Chief Minister in due course of time.
Under the pilot programme, beneficiaries from all the SC families in the Huzurabad Assembly constituency would be enumerated. There are 5,323 SC families in Huzurabad, 4,346 in Kamalapur, 3,678 in Veenavanka, 4,996 in Jammikunta and 2,586 in Illendukunta. The Huzurabad model would serve as a prototype for the full-fledged scheme. The scheme would have three parts — implementation, assessment of results and creation of a corpus, intended to serve as a fall-back fund.
