How will Telangana government roll out DBS when its coffers are going dry?

Hyderabad: The State wing of Bharatiya Janata Party see's the TRS government's Dalit Bandhu Scheme (DBS), promising Rs 10 lakh for each Dalit household,as a potential political issue to take on the pink brigade.

According to party sources, the precarious financial situation of Telangana could remain a hurdle in the implementation of DBS. According to State government's claims, the total SC population comprising two communities within the State comes to about 54 lakh as per the 2011 population census. By now, their population could be anywhere around 65-70 lakh. Even if half of the population was taken eligible under the DBS, then the government needs more than the two financial year's State budget.

That apart, if ST population is also taken into account, then, according to the 2011 census,there were 31.78 lakh people in the State, whose numbers might have gone up in the past 10 years. This makes the DBS implementation, even in a phased manner to cover the SC population in the next two-and-a-half years of the tenure of the current government, an impossible task.

Against this backdrop, the BJP sees that the pilot project of DBS announced to kickstart from Huzurabad as an electoral gimmick of the pink partyto take people for a ride and to woo the voters of a particular community to win the seat in the ensuing bypoll.

The main issue that the party want to take into people is the scope and coverage of DBS. Does the DBS cover only a single community within the SCs?

Insisting on the same, Telangana State BJP chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar, welcoming the DBS, has demanded that TRS government not to restrict the benefits of the coverage only to Huzurabad. He said that the party would take on TRS if it does not implement it across the State and also build people's agitation for the distribution of Rs 10 lakh to SC, ST and BC households in the State under the DBS.

Highlighting the point, the BJP State chief lashed out at the TRS government and Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao asking from where do theState government will get lakhs of crores of rupees to implement the DBS? He said that the TRS was only trying to hoodwink people to win the Huzurabadbypoll.

He reminded that earlier, the State government had promised to give Rs 10,000 for each household affected due to floods in Hyderabad. However, there was no word till date about the distribution of Rs 10,000 to the remaining flood-affected families after the completion of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections.

Speaking to The Hans India, BJP Huzurabad in-charge and Dubbaka MLA M Raghunandan Rao said that the cash-strapped State government had to go for auctioning of public lands to raise Rs 2,000 crore. Given the population of Dalits in the State, how can it claim that it can implement the DBS taking such a huge financial burden? he sought to know.