New Delhi, February 10 (IANS) Alleging major diversion, dilution, and under-utilisation of funds allotted for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), the Congress on Tuesday called Union Budget 2026 a “casteist betrayal” of Dalits and Adivasis.

The budget reflected their exclusion rather than empowerment, claimed Rajendra Pal Gautam, Chairman of the All India Congress Committee’s SC Department, and Vikrant Bhuria, Chairman, Adivasi Congress, at a press conference in New Delhi.

While the centre has projected allocations of Rs. 1.96 lakh crore for SCs and Rs. 1.41 lakh crore for STs, only Rs. 75,077 crore and Rs. 62,093 crore, respectively, were actually set aside for their welfare schemes, they said.

Gautam and Bhuria claimed that the rest of the fund had been merged into generic programmes that fail to address caste- and tribe-based exclusion.

The Congress leaders stated 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 were obsolete or irrelevant.

“Dalit–Adivasi welfare has been reduced to a bookkeeping exercise focused on optics rather than outcomes,” they added.

Highlighting the declining utilisation of SC–ST funds, the leaders stressed that 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,” Gautam and Bhuria claimed in the briefing, alleging that it reflected “discrimination by design” rather than administrative inefficiency.

They further flagged cuts in the National Overseas Scholarship, whose allocation has been reduced to Rs. 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.

Gautam and Bhuria also stated 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 said.

The two 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.

Referring to the education sector, 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.

Campuses continued to witness caste discrimination, without any central law to protect SC-ST students’ dignity and safety, they added.

--IANS

jb/dan