At Dalit meet, Nitish Kumar plays up caste survey benefits

Nitish said: “Do people remember the condition of Bihar before 2005? Women were not able to get out of their house. But now the situation has changed. We have brought down school dropout rates since 2005. We started bridge courses for Muslim by opening Talimi Markaj. We also appointed Vikas Mitras and Tola Sevaks to coordinate with SC people about the government’s schemes and bringing children to schools.”

The CM said: “We have recently increased the honorarium of Vikas Mitras and Tola Sevaks. We will increase it further next year. We recently conducted a caste survey that told us that the SC population is up by about three per cent to 19.65 per cent now. We have raised SC quota from 16 per cent to 20 per cent now…. The survey told economic status of each family irrespective of their caste. We have decided to give a Rs 2-lakh grant to each poor family (about 94 lakh).”

Mounting pressure on the Centre to grant Bihar special category status, Nitish said: “The Central government only engages in publicity. How can they call it a central scheme when a state government bears 40 per cent of its expenses? As we need Rs 2.5 lakh crore to meet our expenses for giving grants to poor families, we request Centre to give us special category status.”

The CM said his government would intensify its special category status demand.

The rally was organised by building construction minister Ashok Kumar Choudhary, a Dalit leader who is considered close to Nitish.

“The entire budget of the social welfare department was only Rs 40.48 crore in 2006. A separate SC/ST welfare department was carved out of it and the budget of this department has gone up to Rs 2,215.30 Crore in 2022-23,” Choudhary said.