Nitish Kumar at the janata durbar. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, June 30: It is virtually going to be a “windfall” for the maha-Dalits — lower class among Scheduled Castes — with the Nitish Kumar government deciding to provide them home, drinking water, school and hospitals free of cost.

Though the chief minister is likely to make a policy announcement to this effect shortly, sources in the CMO revealed to The Telegraph that the scheme was ready for implementation and Nitish could announce it “any time”.

The government has decided to develop self-contained maha-Dalit colonies in every panchayat across the state which would have a house built on four decimal land for every such family, a school, a hospital, a park and drinking water facilities. The colonies would come up on “gairmazrua (government)” land.

The maha-Dalits, including Mehtar, Halkhor, Dom, among others, constitute about 40 per cent of the total Dalit population in the state. Nitish’s move is described as efforts to woo the neglected community and broaden his support base in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls.

In fact, the Nitish government constituted a maha-Dalit commission in August last year to carry out a study on the condition of the community. The commission submitted its interim report to the government within three months of its constitution.

At today’s janata darbar, the chief minister addressed the representatives of urban local bodies announcing before them that the government was in the final stage of completing the list of BPL families in urban areas.

He said the Centre did not concede the state’s demand of increasing 34 per cent kerosene quota and hence an urban BPL family is getting only 2.5 litres as against 3 litres to a rural BPL family.