The parliamentary forum for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and the Scheduled Tribes (STs) yesterday urged the government to step up the allocation for rural areas in proportion to the rural population.
Forum leaders, under the chairmanship of former Union minister G Venkat Swamy, met in the capital yesterday to discuss the budget.
They expressed concern over the reduction in allocations for the social sector, employment generation schemes and the rural sector and said that such measures would be detrimental to the interests of SC and STs.
The meeting reiterated its demands that there should be an SC-ST development authority, that the Capitals 26, Alipore Road be declared a memorial of B R Ambedkar and 6, Krishna Menon Marg be declared Jagjivan Ram memorial.
