Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)
Bengaluru, Mar 27: Karnataka chief minister (CM), Siddaramaiah, has mooted a proposal to hike reservation for scheduled castes, tribes and backward classes from the current to 50 to 72 percent on the model of Tamil Nadu. This is another initiative from Siddaramaiah, who has already come up with the scheme to allocate 24.1 percent of grants in the budget for scheduled castes and tribes in tune with their population, and tabled the bill to give ownership of houses to those who have been living in them, has taken interest in effecting hike in reservation now.
Siddaramaiah said that the government's aim is to create a society where everyone is equal. "We are committed to provide social justice to oppressed classes of the society. For this, we want to increase reservation to 72 percent. In Tamil Nadu, the reservation percentage now is 69. We will keep in mind Supreme Court verdicts before making legal efforts to implement this scheme," he revealed.
The chief minister was speaking after expressing a sense of gratitude of Dalits for his initiatives aimed to benefit them at the felicitation organized for him at the palace ground here under the leadership of social welfare minister, H Anjaneya, on Sunday March 26.
"When minister, Anjaneya, brought to my notice about Andhra Pradesh having passed a law to set aside budgetary grant to scheduled castes and tribes in tune with their population, I decided to follow suit. As a result, as against Rs 39,000 crore set aside for this sector by the central government as a whole, the state alone has fixed budget of Rs 27,000 crore. We have affected four fold increase in the financial assistance to this sector as compared to previous governments. The entire country should adopt this method, and Dalit organizations have to bring pressure on the union government to fall in line," the chief minister said.
When some of the participants demanded to implement Sadashiva commission report and provide for internal reservation within the communities, he just said that he and his cabinet colleagues will move aggressively towards the upliftment of the downtrodden. He said he was trying to provide political freedom, social and financial equality to the lowest strata of the society by adopting it as his duty, duly adding that had agreed to take part in this function at the insistence of minister, Anjaneya.