Hyderabad: The Telangana State government is planning a major welfare scheme targeting backward classes, which involve providing benefits in both cash and kind.
The backward classes make up the majority population in the state. Chief Minister K. Cha-ndrasekhar Rao has alre-ady held two meetings with a group of politicians and officials on the issue and directed them to come out with schemewise details for the BCs.
The Chief Minister ap-pears to have told them to eliminate middlemen, who according to official sources, are eating away a major chunk of the benefits.
The whole exercise of identifying the schemes and the money component involved will be finalised soon and in all probability will be included in the State Budget.
The sources said the Chief Minister, with an eye on 2019 elections, has initiated caste and sectionwise schemes, whose benefits can reach them more effectively.
For example, earlier fishermen used to work for their society and in turn the government used to release subsidies or benefits to the society. However, these societies used to eat away the benefits, without passing on to the fishermen.
Now under the new scheme, the sources said the government will identify the fishermen and release the subsidy directly to the fishermen, eliminating the society management.
Similarly, the core group constituted by the Chief Minister is trying to identify schemes, where the government can reach out to the beneficiaries directly, thus eliminating brokers.
Confirming the new initiative, finance minister Etela Rajender said, “Each and every section of the society will be taken care of by the government directly. Our aim is to reach the beneficiaries directly and not through the middlemen. All these new initiatives will be introduced in the ensuing state Budget.”
However he denied any political motive behind the new initiative. “After all, the government is expected to take care of all sections of the society, and not to leave any particular section. Of course, backward classes form a major part of the population in Telangana. They make up 52 per cent of the population, if we do something good for them, it cannot be called as election-focused scheme. In fact there are no elections till 2019. So why should we do it now itself,” he asked.
