The Madras High Court on Tuesday issued notice to Tamil Nadu government on a petition which alleged that funds allocated by the Centre for Dalits' welfare schemes had been diverted to other state programmes.

A division bench, comprising Justice T S Sivagnanam and Justice R Mala, issued notice to the state Adi Dravidar and Tribal welfare Department and posted the matter to March 15.

Petitioner M Selvaraj, state General Secretary of BJP's Scheduled Caste Morcha, sought a direction to the department to provide details of the exact amount of money allegedly diverted to other departments.

He submitted that as per information obtained through RTI query, funds allocated by the central government for Scheduled Caste community were not fully utilised and the same were diverted to other state welfare programmes.

A representation sent by him in this regard to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 30, 2015 was in turn forwarded to the Commissioner of the concerned department in Chennai for investigation, he submitted.

Subsequently, the investigation made by the concerned department found the information to be true, the petitioner claimed.

He prayed with the court to direct the authorities concerned to furnish details of the exact amount that was diverted to other departments under different heads of account from funds allotted for the SC community by the Centre.

He also wanted the court to direct the authorities concerned to collect the funds from other departments and use it for the welfare of SC and ST people.