Congress Slams Centre For Slashing Telangana Share In Budget

Accusing the BJP government at the Centre of doing injustice to Telangana in the union budget, senior Congress leader and former minister Mohammed Ali Shabbir on Sunday demanded that Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao take an all-party delegation to New Delhi to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the state's financial expectations from the Centre for 2020-21.

Shabbir Ali said that the BJP had been neglecting Telangana ever since it came to power in 2014. He said that Telangana neither benefited from any flagship scheme of the union government nor received any Central assistance for its projects. Instead, the Centre had slashed the State's share of Central taxes and was avoiding releasing the dues.

"In the 2019-20 union budget, Telangana was assured of Rs 19,718 crore as its share of the Central taxes. In the revised estimates, the share has been reduced to Rs 15,987 crore. This is a straight reduction of Rs 3,731 crore or almost 18.9%. Further, for 2020-21, only Rs 16,726 crore has been earmarked for us. The Central government owes an explanation for why Telangana is being discriminated against," he said.

"Not a single project from Telangana received Central funding during the last six years. And going by the present attitude of the BJP government, it is most unlikely that the promises which were made with Telangana will be fulfilled," he added.

The Congress leader also blamed the TRS government for not pressurizing the Centre over the fulfilment of the promises made in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act and for other benefits.

"The TRS government is equally responsible for the present situation as it has failed to make timely representations to the Centre," he said, adding that Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao focused more on getting the borrowing limits for Telangana increased than seeking direct funding from the Centre. Consequently, the state government had borrowed over Rs 2.5 lakh crore from different agencies, pushing the entire State into a huge debt trap while the Centre washed off its hands by giving only a meagre share of the Central taxes to the state, he lamented.

Shabbir Ali also condemned the BJP government for no significant increase in the budget for minorities' welfare. As against Rs 4,700 crore in 2019-20, this year Rs 5,029 crore had been earmarked, an increase of just Rs 329 crore. He also said that nearly 71% of the budget allocated in 2019-20 had remained unspent. Therefore, he demanded that the BJP government give an assurance of 100% utilisation of allocations made for the welfare of SCs, STs, OBCs, minorities and other sections.