Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday said that not even a single rupee meant for the development of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes had been diverted for other purposes.
Speaking during Question Hour, Mr Rao refuted the allegations made by Congress MLAs Dr J. Geetha Reddy and V. Sampath Kumar that the government was diverting SC/ST funds.
Mr Rao circulated pen drives containing nearly one lakh pages to all legislators containing details of the spending .
He offered a debate for two days in the House during the next session on utilisation of SC/ST funds by the previous administrations and the TRS government.
“We are sincere about the development of SCs and STs, who are languishing in poverty. For that reason, we have brought SC/ST Development Fund Act with stringent provisions on spending within Annual Buget period,” Mr Rao said.
In case the funds are not spent, the balance should be carried forward to the next year, he said. “The Congress government too brought the SC/ST Sub-Plan Act just before elections in 2014. But it remained only on paper and everyone knows the purpose behind it," Mr Rao said.
The government has allocated '88,071 crore under SC/ST Develop-ment Plan this year, of which '33,462 crore had been spent. This was a record, he said.
