Will strive hard for development of dalits \'until my last breath\': KCR
Karimnagar: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao said on Friday that just as he had participated in the separate Telangana movement by sacrificing everything, he would now work to make the Dalit Bandhu scheme a huge success.
“I will strive for comprehensive development of the Dalits until my last breath,” he said while chairing a review meeting with ministers T. Harish Rao, Koppula Eshwar and Gangula Kamalakar and district collector R.V. Karnan at the collectorate conference hall here.
The CM said that society had discriminated against Dalits and made them live in poverty. “This is a vicious practice that has existed for a long time. At least now, Telangana society should eschew such a bad tradition and work for the economic and social uplift of the Dalits,” he said.
“With a firm determination, we achieved separate statehood and are developing the state in all sectors. With the same spirit, we all should work for the development of the Dalits. If Telangana society is determined to do something, then it happens,” the CM said.
Rao said, “We renovated the irrigation sector and made agriculture a festival. We were able to supply uninterrupted power. As a result, those who went for labour work are now able to produce around 3 crore tonnes of food grains in the state,” he said.
He said the state is having meaningful and qualitative development. “From a time of hunger deaths, we transformed the state into Annapurna. The caste-based professions which were about to be extinct were given a new life by the TS government by way of investing crores of rupees. The government supported the people in rearing sheep, fish farming etc and helped the weavers community alongside the MBCs, SCs, STs, BCs and Minorities.”
The CM said, “By introducing the Rythu Bandhu and Rythu Bima Schemes, the state government has given the much-needed relief to the agriculture sector.”
“Telangana is now heading towards all round development. This is the only state that is sanctioning pensions to single women, beedi workers, patients suffering from filaria and also implementing welfare schemes like Kalyana Lakshmi, KCR Kit and Amma Odi vehicles.”
Rao said, “For the past several years, I was thinking about development of the Dalits. When I was MLA in Siddipet, I started the Dalit Chaitanya Jyothi programme and strove hard for development of this community. The Dalit Bandhu scheme would have been started in May last year, but Coronavirus pandemic came and stalled the work on this for some time.”
Parliament member Santosh Kumar, MLC Rajeshwar Reddy, MLAs Rasamai Balakishan, Sunke Ravishankar, former minister Kadiyam Srihari, SC corporation chairman Banda Srinivas, former SC, ST commission chairman E. Srinivas, CMO officials Smitha Sabharwal and Rahul Bojja were present apart from the district collector.
