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Udupi: Higher Education Minister V.S. Acharya said on Sunday that the Government had considerably increased its budgetary allocation for the Special Component Plan (SCP) and Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) for the welfare of the members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the State.

He was distributing the keys of 34 autorickshaws to the unemployed youth of the Koraga community, a very backward Scheduled Tribe, at a function organised by the Udupi Zilla Panchayat, Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP), Udupi City Municipal Council and the Syndicate Bank, here.

He gave away cheques of Rs. 25,000 each for providing housing facilities to eight Koraga beneficiaries, cheques of Rs. 6,000 each for electrification of houses to six Koraga beneficiaries, and scholarships of Rs. 1.85 lakh to eight Koraga students on the occasion.

Dr. Acharya said that Rs. 3,359 crore and Rs. 1,344 crore were provided for SCP and TSP in 2010-11 respectively. But the State Government had increased the allocation to Rs. 4,633 crore for SCP and Rs. 1,867 crore for TSP in its budget for 2011-12.

People living in Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes colonies had been facing difficulties because of lack of infrastructure. Hence the Government had decided to develop Dalit colonies at a cost of Rs. 300 crore. An amount of Rs. 1 crore would be provided for the construction of every such SC/ST colony. The district administration had identified lands to be provided to the members of the Koraga community in different parts of the district. This would help them build their own houses.

It was necessary to provide skill-based training to students belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as this would improve their chances of getting employed. MLAs Raghupati Bhat and Lalaji Mendon, president of Udupi City Municipal Council Kiran Kumar, Additional Deputy Commissioner T.M. Prabhakar, Chief Manager of Syndicate Bank Hemanth Bhide, ITDP officer Urmila, and municipal councillor Suresh Shetty, were present