Congress Demands White Paper On Telangana's Financial Situation

Congress MP & former TPCC president N Uttam Kumar Reddy today demanded that the State government release a White Paper on the State's financial situation.

"Telangana is in a huge financial crisis. It has become almost bankrupt with no funds left to spend on welfare schemes and other expenses. A large portion of the revenues are being spent on instalments for bad loans and huge interests. While Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao is trying to cover up the financial mismanagement through political statements, the BJP government at the Centre is trying to crush Telangana financially by not releasing the funds and imposing other fiscal restrictions," Reddy said.

Reddy ridiculed KCR's contention that restrictions on Telangana on additional borrowings were responsible for the present financial crisis. He said that the State's finances had been out of shape right from the beginning as the TRS government had used inflated figures, manipulated data and even tampered with facts to highlight Telangana as the country's richest State.

All the annual budgets presented by the TRS government were unrealistic, and based on huge assumptions and not actual revenues, Reddy said. The CM had even projected loans borrowed on huge interest rates as the State's revenues to show inflated figures of growth and per capita income, he alleged.

He said that Telangana, at the time of its formation, had inherited debts of nearly Rs 69,000 crore accumulated over 60 years. But in the last eight years, due to KCR's financial mismanagement, the overall debts had increased to over Rs 4 lakh crore, he said. Further, the per capita debt had increased from Rs 18,157 in 2014-15 to over Rs 1 lakh in 2022-23, he said. Consequently, today the Telangana government was spending a significant percentage of its revenues on repayment of loans and huge interest, he lamented.

Reddy also said that the TRS government had not implemented a single welfare scheme 100% since 2014-15 primarily due to financial mismanagement. He said that the Dalit Bandhu scheme was launched primarily for the Huzurabad by-election. A few select families were given the Rs 10 lakh assistance, and once the elections were over, its implementation was slowed down. He said that all the 17 lakh poor Dalit families should be given the promised Rs 10 lakh assistance, but the TRS government did not have funds to support even 10,000 families.

"Also, over 40 lakh people in Telangana are jobless. They include nearly 23-24 lakh qualified youth who registered themselves with the State Public Service Commission. The TRS government neither provided jobs nor paid the promised unemployment allowance of Rs 3,016 to the jobless youth due to shortage of funds," he said, and advised KCR to engage financial experts to discuss and formulate solutions to resolve the ongoing financial crisis.