Delivering his ‘padayatra’ (foot march) promise to backward castes (BCs) before the civic bodies elections, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy has announced the formation of 52 corporations in the state for BCs and has also decided to fill the posts of chairpersons and director of BC corporations by the end of this month.
This decision was taken at a high-level ministerial review meeting at the CM’s camp office in Tadepalli. Jagan Reddy has also resolved to set up separate corporations for the BCs in three categories–six corporations with population of 10 lakh, 27 corporations for population between 1-10 lakh and 19 corporations with population below 1 lakh. The constitutions of BC corporations are based on recommendations by a committee chaired by Janga Krishna Murthy before the 2019 elections. An amount of Rs 22, 685.74 crore has been spent towards BCs’ welfare benefiting 2.13 crore beneficiaries.
The Andhra CM also criticised former CM Chandrababu Naidu and said that he only considered 62 castes as BCs. He added, “Skill development centres are coming up in each parliamentary constituency in 18 months and we are having tie up with big companies and Germany will be our partner in skill development.
The corporations should see that their community gets the benefit in skill upgrading and should have at least one representative from Skill development centres.
Under YSR Cheyutha, nearly 25 lakh women in the age group of 45 to 60 have benefited and majority of them are BCs.” Deputy Chief Minister Pilli Subhas Chandra Bose, Mopidevi Venkataramana, state ministers including Krishna Das, Botsa Satyanarayana and others also attended the meeting. Meanwhile, it is being said that these corporations are going to help the backward castes and can be vote banks for the ruling YSR Congress Party in the coming local body elections.