Figures submitted by State governments to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) have led the monitoring body to observe that while “many States have generally allocated funds to the Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan (SCSP) on a par with the Scheduled Castes (SC) population of the States, the actual expenditures under SCSP is between 2% and 8% of allocation in most States except West Bengal, Karnataka and Telangana.”
“The unspent SCSP fund is often re-appropriated,” the Commission says.
The data submitted by the States covered the years 2012-13 to 2015-16.
The analysis of the data by NCSC officials, accessed by The Hindu , reveals a disturbing trend: most of what is shown as SCSP expenditure is SCSP outlay adjusted in general population schemes, a practice which, the NCSC holds, “defeats the purpose of the SCSP.”
