HYDERABAD: Telangana Congress president Uttam Kumar Reddy on Monday held out a slew of promises to woo the Christian community in Telangana, including bringing in legislation to grant reservation in jobs for Dalit Christians and subsidy for pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Addressing a meeting of All-India Christian Federation at YMCA, Secunderabad, Uttam promised the next Congress government would give honorarium to pastors and priests on par with pujarais and imams. He said priests and pastors would be given health and accidental Insurance of ?5 lakh, double bedroom houses or financial aid to build houses and free education for children.

He said all churches, along with other places of worship, would be given free power supply. He also promised to introduce a better system for release of funds for construction and repairs of churches.

Other sops included hostels and skill development centres for Christian students, loans for self-employment scheme, ?3,000 monthly unemployment allowance, land for new churches, CBI probe into encroachment of properties belonging to churches, a judicial commission to study socio-economic status of the community, grant-inaid to christian minority institutions, co-option membership in zilla parishads, mandal parishads, corporations and other bodies.

He also promised to establish a Christian Study Circle for students and subsidy for those going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He said the next Congress government would strengthen the Christian Minorities Finance Corporation by giving adequate funds. He said the corporation remained neglected under the TRS regime and KCR neither gave funds nor filled any vacancy.

The TPCC chief said that a Christian Welfare Board would be constituted to take up welfare programmes at a large scale. He said the Minorities Commission would be given judicial powers.