New Delhi 22 August. 2008: A Christian organisation representing Dalits or the socially underprivileged on Saturday questioned the church leadership for demanding special treatment for them and accused it of exploiting their economic and social backwardness.

Stating that Dalit Christians accounted for about 70 percent of India's Christian population, the Poor Christian Liberation Movement (PCLM) accused high-caste Christians of exploiting them. The church leadership wanted to exploit the poverty and unemployment among the Dalit Christians to demand reservation of government jobs for them by getting them classified as scheduled castes, PCLM President R.L. Francis said in a statement.

People belonging to the scheduled castes benefit from reservations in educational institutions and government jobs.

"It is worth mentioning here that when they (Dalit Christians) were in Hindu society, they were the victims of the caste system. The foremost reason for their coming to the fold of Christianity was that there would be no discrimination and they would be treated as equals."

Dalit Christians are being denied all these facilities while the church leadership continues to flourish by usurping vast foreign funding and real estate resources," Francis charged.