By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 13 Jul: A meeting of the State Level Vigilance and Monitoring Committee constituted under the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 was held at the Chief Minister’s residence here today under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami. This meeting was organised after 14 years. The Chief Minister today directed the officials to hold this meeting every six months. The Chief Minister said that the Chairpersons of the SC and the ST Commission should also be invited as special members in the upcoming meetings.
The Chief Minister also directed in the meeting that the pending cases under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act should be disposed off in a timely manner, for which regular advocacy should be done in the courts. On receipt of complaints, FIR proceedings should be completed immediately and the police should also investigate the complaints speedily. Cases pending for a long time should be disposed off on mission mode. Dhami asserted that the officials must ensure timely payment of permissible assistance amount to the victims. He directed the officials to seriously resolve the problems of the people of Scheduled Castes and Tribes.
During the meeting, the CM also directed that arrangements be made to simplify old age pension related procedures for the benefit of the beneficiaries on completion of 60 years of age. Those eligible for pension should not face any unnecessary inconvenience. For this, the best practices followed in other states should also be studied. The CM also stated that an integrated system should be made so that the beneficiaries get the benefits of various schemes of SC and ST category on a single platform. The Chief Minister said that “In order to make the people aware of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, the Social Welfare Department and the Home Department should do extensive publicity through various mediums.
In the meeting, Finance Minister Prem Chand Aggarwal said that in order to make people fully aware about the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and departmental schemes, publicity should be done through multipurpose welfare camps organised at the district level and also through wall painting and flex in the development block offices.
Cabinet Minister Rekha Arya said that senior or PCS officers should be appointed to speed up the work in Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Commissions. She also spoke about speeding up the filling of backlog posts.
Secretary Social Welfare Dr Neeraj Khairwal made a detailed presentation in the meeting. He said that whatever suggestions have been received in the meeting, further action will be taken on those suggestions immediately. He said that all types of cases registered under Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act will be classified and details will be presented in the next meeting.
MLAs Khajan Das, Durgeshwar Lal, Bhupal Ram Tamta, Fakir Ram, Sarita Arya and Parvati Das, Chief Secretary Radha Raturi, Director General of Police Abhinav Kumar, Special Secretary Home Riddhim Agarwal, Additional Secretary Prakash Chandra, Bhagwat Kishore Mishra, Omkar Singh, Director Social Welfare Ashish Bhatgai, Director Tribal Welfare Sanjay Singh Tolia and departmental officers were present in the meeting.
