Ahead of the assembly elections in the state, Telangana government issued an order for providing financial assistance of Rs one lakh to minorities with 100 per cent subsidy.

However, this falls short of financial assistance of Rs 10 lakh offered to Dalits under the Dalit Bandhu scheme to encourage entrepreneurship, which was being demanded by AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi for the economically backward Muslims in Telangana.

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Although Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao promised to look into it after Owaisi raised the demand, it has not been implemented. Instead the financial assistance for minorities will be on the lines of the assistance that is currently extended to the backward classes in the state.

Muslims form the majority among the minority population in the state which include Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis.

The BRS government is out to woo the minority voters after it announced it will oppose the Uniform Civil Code and announce the start of construction for extending the Metro railway into Old City area of Hyderabad which has been pending for a long time.

Under this scheme the Christian Minority Corporation would identify and extend the benefits to eligible Christians while the State Minority Corporation would undertake the task of identifying and providing assistance to the beneficiaries from Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist and Parsi communities.

The grant will be given to only one member of a family and the age limit has been fixed between 21 and 55 years. The annual income of the applicant shall not exceed Rs 1.50 lakh in rural areas and Rs 2 lakh in urban areas.

According to a statement from the Chief Minister’s office, the Telangana government was striving to maintain the Ganga Jamuni Tehzeeb and claimed to have spent Rs 8581 crore between June 2014 and January 2023 on the welfare of minority communities.

In 2018, the BRS government had won a second term because of popular welfare measures including Shadi Mubarak under which parents of girls above the age of 18 got Rs one lakh for expenditure in marriages and old age and disabled pensions, particularly among Muslim voters.

However, a few months back AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi slammed the BRS government for overlooking the issues of the Minorities in Telangana including the extension of Dalit Bandhu scheme to the poor Muslims as well as delay in initiating the construction work for metro train to the Old City area.