NewzVille Desk
The All India Congress Committee’s SC Department and the Adivasi Congress today termed the Union Budget as a “casteist betrayal” of Dalits and Adivasis, alleging large-scale diversion, dilution and under-utilisation of funds meant for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs).
Addressing a press conference today, Rajendra Pal Gautam, Chairman of the SC Department of the AICC, and Dr Vikrant Bhuria, Chairman of the Adivasi Congress, alleged that the budget showed exclusion rather than empowerment of the Dalits and the Adivasis.
They said while the government has projected allocations of ₹1.96 lakh crore for SCs and ₹1.41 lakh crore for STs, only ₹75,077 crore and ₹62,093 crore respectively were actually earmarked for targeted welfare schemes. The remainder, they alleged, had been merged into generic programmes that fail to address caste- and tribe-based exclusion.
The party leaders said that only 41 per cent of schemes under SC–ST allocations were genuinely relevant, while 42 per cent were general schemes and 17 per cent obsolete or irrelevant. “Dalit–Adivasi welfare has been reduced to a bookkeeping exercise focused on optics rather than outcomes,” they added.
Highlighting declining utilisation of SC–ST funds, Congress leaders said spending had consistently fallen between FY 2020–21 and FY 2024–25. “In 2024–25, only about 75 per cent of SC funds were utilised, largely through non-targeted routes,” they said, while arguing that it reflected “discrimination by design” rather than administrative inefficiency.
The Congress leaders also flagged cuts in the National Overseas Scholarship, whose allocation has been reduced to ₹125 crore. Citing data from 2025–26, they said that although 106 students were selected, only 40 received scholarships due to a fund crunch, leaving 66 SC/ST/OBC students unsupported.
The party leaders alleged that thousands of crores of rupees under the SC Sub Plan (SCSP) and Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) had been parked in schemes such as fertiliser and urea subsidies, telecom compensation, infrastructure maintenance and road works. “With less than 20 per cent of SC–ST households owning land, these allocations primarily benefited dominant communities rather than Dalit and Adivasi labourers,” they claimed.
Referring to education, Gautam and Bhuria pointed to meagre allocations for student-centric schemes such as ‘Top Class Education’, ‘National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship’ and ‘SC–ST Hub Centres’, even as large sums from the funds meant for SC Sub-Plan and Tribal Sub-Plan flowed to institutions like IITs, NITs and central universities They alleged that campuses continued to witness caste discrimination, without any central law to protect SC–ST students’ dignity and safety.
Cong leaders demanded that the Centre bring a law to make SCSP and TSP funds non-divertible and non-lapsable, ensure allocations in proportion to population share, and set up a statutory monitoring mechanism to prevent misuse and surrender of funds meant for SCs and STs.
