BENGALURU: Union Minister of State for Social Justice A Narayanaswamy has suggested that the government set up special courts to conduct trials in connection with atrocities on Dalits as the rate of conviction is a mere 3 per cent.
“Despite chargesheet being filed by the police, over 6,000 cases are pending for disposal,” he said after holding a review meeting with Chief Secretary P Ravikumar and officials of the Social Welfare Department here on Friday.
The minister informed the meeting that the Centre has granted Rs 6,392 crore for various welfare schemes in 16 departments of which Rs 4,519 was released and Rs 3,984 already spent. About 57,000 SCs and STs have benefited under the ‘Ganga Kalyana’ scheme and the state has been asked to send a fresh proposal for more grants as there are more beneficiaries, he said.
Regarding post-metric scholarships for students, he noted that a majority of them had not applied on the portal under the Direct Beneficiary Transfer (DBT) scheme due to technical snags, and instructed authorities to take care of this.