Hyderabad: The deadline for submitting online applications to avail of Rs 1 lakh financial assistance to Backward Classes dependent on caste-based professions ended on Tuesday. Official sources said about five lakh applications have been received within the deadline.
However, BC unions demanded that the state government extend the deadline arguing that over 20 lakh applicants could not submit applications within the deadline. There said there was huge delay in the issuance of caste, income and nativity certificates by the revenue department due to which they could submit online applications. They said the revenue department's servers crashed due to heavy rush of applicants who thronged Mee Seva centres to obtain the certificates.
The government made mandatory for applicants to submit the certificates to avail the benefit. The online application portal was designed in such a manner that applicants cannot submit their applications without uploading caste, income and nativity certificates issued by the revenue department.
With this, lakhs of BCs thronged the Mee Seva centres and revenue offices across the state from June 9 when the online portal was launched to submit applications. But only five lakh people could obtain these certificates as revenue department could not handle lakhs of applications received from people. The servers of revenue department crashed unable to handle huge load of applications.
However, there has been no announcement from the state government on the extension of the deadline. Speaking to media personnel on Tuesday, BC welfare minister Gangula Kamalakar said that there is no proposal to extend the deadline. He said that the beneficiaries will be selected in July. The MLAs of respective constituencies will distribute the cheques to beneficiaries from the last week of July.
