Congress leader Shabbir Ali slammed minister K T Rama Rao's claims that Telangana had registered increases of 130% in its GSDP and 125% in its per capita income.
Former minister and senior Congress leader Mohammed Ali Shabbir today ridiculed the claims made by IT minister K T Rama Rao that Telangana had registered increases of 130% in its GSDP and 125% in its per capita income.
He alleged that a report with distorted data was indirectly planted in leading newspapers in view of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao's visit to New Delhi.
Shabbir Ali claimed that KTR had shared a news clipping to make the false claim of growth in GSDP and PCI instead of sharing the original report of the Union Ministry of Statistics & Program Implementation.
"The TRS government has habit of manipulating the budget figures to make tall claims of growth. In the Governor's address to the legislature on March 14, 2021, the TRS government claimed that the GSDP had increased by 114.71% in the last six years. Now the growth figure has been raised to 130%," he said.
He said that the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) and the 15th Finance Commission had clearly pointed out the "auditing errors" committed by the Telangana government in the budget figures.
"They have accused the state government of inflating figures to show high revenues. Even the loans and borrowings were shown as the state's revenue. Therefore, the present claim made by KTR, even if it was based on the statistics of the Union Ministry of Statistics, is not reliable as it is based on manipulated data," he said.
"The TRS government claims that Telangana's per capita income has increased from Rs. 1,24,104 in 2014 to Rs. 2,78,833 in 2021, a whopping increase of Rs. 1,54,729 in the last seven years. This figure is quite imaginative due to various factors. In a population of nearly 3.84 crore, nearly 87.57 lakh families or nearly 2.86 crore people are beneficiaries of PDS rice. The income criterion to get a ration card is Rs. 1.5 lakh in rural areas and Rs. 2 lakh in urban areas. Therefore, none of these 2.86 crore people is having an annual income of Rs. 2,78,833.
"Further, there are 39,36,521 Aasra pensioners of various categories each surviving on a Rs. 2,000 monthly pension given by the state government. Then, almost 19-20 lakh qualified youth are registered with the Telangana State Public Service Commission, and another 22-25 lakh youth are jobless. These pensioners and jobless youth are clearly not earning Rs. 2,78,833 per year.
"If we exclude these three categories of people, then it is impossible for the rest of the adult population to earn so much to take the state's per capita income Rs. 2,78,333. This clearly means that the PCI figures are exaggerated and false," he said.
Shabbir Ali said that the Congress would continue to expose the false claims being made by KCR government with regard to the state's economy. He said that his party, in consultation with financial experts, would conduct department-wise analyses and come up with the real statistics to enlighten the people regarding the real economic situation prevailing in the state.