Hyderabad: Telangana State Planning Board vice-chairman B Vinod Kumar on Sunday said that the 'Dalit Bandhu' is not a new scheme because Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao announced this scheme six months ago in the Assembly and it was delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In a conference held with artists of 'Samskruthika Sarathi', Vinod Kumar said, "CM KCR has been designing programmes for the upliftment of the dalits in the State for quite some time.

During the budget sessions of the Assembly in February, KCR announced the scheme for dalits and based on his announcement Finance Minister T Harish Rao had allocated Rs 1,000 crore in the budget". He also recalled that a meeting of the SC-MLAs was also held in the Assembly premises and the implementation was delayed because of the pandemic. The planning board VC said that the way 'Rythu Bandhu' was started in Huzurabad, the CM wanted to start 'Dalit Bandhu' from Huzurabad and there is no politics behind this.

Kumar further said that the artists played an important and un-forgetful role in the Telangana agitation. The CM gave employment to the artists who played a crucial role in the Telangana agitation. He called upon the artists to take the government schemes to the people. MLA and Samskruthika Sarathi Chairman R Balkishan, MLC Goreti Venkanna, Culture director M Harikrishna and others also attended the meeting.

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