Siddu promises separate ministry for STs

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah disclosed that the State government had decided to set up a separate ministry for the implementation of welfare programmes for Scheduled Tribes (STs).

He made the comments after inaugurating the Maharishi Valmiki Jayanti programme organized at Vidhana Soudha's Banquet Hall on Saturday. He also presented the Maharshi Valmiki Awards on the occasion.

“During our previous term, a decision was taken to allocate grants to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled tribes according to their population in the Belagavi session. Therefore, more funds could be spent under the SCSP and TSP (Scheduled Castes Sub-Allocation and Tribal-Sub Allocation Plan) schemes. Earlier, only Rs 6,000 crore was allocated under these schemes. However, during our previous term, this amount was increased from Rs 6,000 crore to Rs 30,000 crore,” Siddaramaiah said.

“Our government has allocated Rs 34 thousand crore for these categories in this year's budget,” he added.

The CM pointed out that 17.1 per cent of the total population of the state belongs to SC and 7 percent belong to the ST category.

“According to the 2011 census, 24.1 percent of the population belongs to the SC and ST category. Karnataka has the distinction of being the first state to bring in a law to set aside a separate grant for the welfare of SC/ST categories according to this population. No government can change this law. After this law, from 2013 to 2018, our government allocated a total of Rs 88,000 crores for SC/ST people. This grant is state mandated for this size of population,” Siddaramaiah said.