The Congress demanded on Monday that the Telangana government must issue an ordinance at the earliest to provide 12 per cent reservations to Muslims.
The Congress party also pressured the TRS government to make similar reservations for Scheduled Tribes. Speaking to mediapersons, Congress legislator Mohammad Ali Shabbir lashed out at the government and claimed that it had done little or nothing to take concrete steps towards making reservations a reality. He claimed that the two committees – the G Sudhir Committee to look into reservations for Muslims and the Dr S Challappa Committee to look into the considerations for STs – constituted under the Inquiry Act of 1952, were an “eyewash”.
Pointing out which he considered lacunae in the constitution of these committees, Shabbir Ali said that according to the directions of the Supreme Court, only judicial commissions have the power to add or remove communities in the lists or increase or decrease quotas in terms of employment. “Chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao deliberately constituted meaningless committees to buy time and mislead the Muslims and STs,” he said.
The Congress leader also slammed the Telangana government which, he claimed, had utilised only 19.56 per cent of the total budget for welfare schemes for various communities including STs, Backward Classes (BCs), Scheduled Castes (SCs). He later released data pertaining to the expenditure of allocated budget for minorities, ST, SC, BC welfare in the last budget. The figures revealed that of the Rs 1,105 crore earmarked for minorities welfare, only 16.08 per cent were released. Similarly, of the Rs 2,878 crore allocated for ST welfare, 22.57 per cent were released and of the Rs 2,172 earmarked for BC welfare, 13.24 per cent were released.