Congress Seeks White Paper On Telangana's Finances

Claiming that a major financial crisis had hit the state, Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) spokesperson Syed Nizamuddin today demanded that the TRS government release a White Paper on the state's financial status.

Addressing the media at Gandhi Bhavan, Nizamuddin said that the finances of Telangana were in very bad shape with the government having no clarity on how to handle the future requirements and bridge the gap between revenues and expenditure.

Huge allocations were needed for education, health & family welfare, urban & rural development, housing, irrigation and other core sectors in the state. The expenditure on the revenue and capital account would also soon increase to nearly Rs 1.25 lakh crores per year. Including all the money required to fulfill its electoral promises, the overall budgetary requirement for the Telangana government from 2019-20 would be nearly Rs 2.5 lakh crores pr annum, Nizamuddin said. However, the present revenues from all sources were less than Rs 1.5 lakh crores per annum. There was clarity needed on how this huge deficit of over Rs 1 lakh crores would be covered, he said.

The TPCC leader alleged that Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao was still focussed on politics even one month after the elections. For the first time in history the MLAs would be taking oath one month after their election, and a two-member cabinet including the Chief Minister was running the government, he pointed out. All of this did not bode very well for the future of Telangana, he said.