Aiming at wooing Backward Classes in the state, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has been giving big boost to BCs educational opportunities. In a major initiative in this direction, for the first time in the country, the Telangana State Government has been taking steps of providing residential schools in a big way for the BCs.

The government has already started the Mahatma Jyotirao Phule Backward Classes Welfare Residential Schools Society, and by the next academic year, BC Residential Schools will be started in all the 119 Assembly segments. The government targeted to enroll 76,160 students in these schools.

In another major step, Chief Minister announced today in the assembly that all the Residential Schools for Backward Classes in the State would be renamed after great the 19th century social reformer Mahatma Jyotirao Phule.

In the BC Residential Schools, English will be the medium of education from 5th standard to Intermediate. The government will be spending Rs 1.25 lakh on every student to ensure proper infrastructure, nutritious food, books and uniforms. The quality of education in these residential schools will be on par with education being imparted in corporate schools where children of the rich study.

Recalling Phule’s assertion that the first step of Backward Classes development was education, Chief Minister said that in modern society, creating educational opportunities was the only means for the BC’s to be part of development. “Education is not only a mere tool for knowledge acquisition, it also gives social status,” he said, adding that the State government’s stress was on giving financial security for the BCs.