Central Hyderabad now has a 125-feet-tall bronze statue of B.R. Ambedkar just yards away from the recently inaugurated Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Secretariat. While Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao inaugurated the statue on Ambedkar Jayanti near the Hussain Sagar Lake, an event for which Dalits from all the 119 Assembly constituencies in the State were invited, the Municipal Administration and Urban Development Minister K.T. Rama Rao unveiled a shorter version of the statue in another part of the city.
By unveiling the statue, which is the tallest of Ambedkars in the country, and by building a new Secretariat in the name of Ambedkar, which is sprawled over 28 acres with the Ashoka Emblem placed at the main dome at a height of 265 feet, the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) has made it clear that it is attempting to swing Dalit votes in its favour as the State is set to go to the polls later this year. These initiatives are part of its outreach to Dalits over the last few years. In 2021, for instance, the Telangana government launched the Dalit Bandhu Scheme, which provides a one-time capital grant of ₹10 lakh to Scheduled Caste (SC) families to start their own businesses or entrepreneurial ventures.
There is a significant SC population in Telangana. The Samagra Kutumba Survey of 2014 had shown that 17.48% of the population of Telangana is SC. In 13 of the 32 districts in the State, the SC population is higher than 20%. In Mancherial district, which has three Assembly constituencies, the SC population is 26%. The 2011 Census data had pegged the SC population at 15.45%.
