Debate On Budget: KCR Rejects Congress Allegations

Congress leader and former minister D Sridhar Babu on Saturday started a discussion on behalf of the party on the vote-on-account-budget presented by the Telangana government.

Initiating the discussion in the House, Babu expectedly adopted a highly caustic tone. He started off by saying that the government should have introduced a full-fledged budget. He also criticized the government for not tabling in the current session the Economic Survey report, which he said was the best indicator to tell the people about the current status of the state.

Babu slammed the government for what he claimed was its failure to bring funds from the Centre to Telangana, and to get the Centre to fulfill its assurances made to the people of the state. This had resulted in poor financial health for the state, with the state government borrowing Rs 90,000 crore during the last four years, he said.

Claiming that all the power generation plants in the state were those initiated during the Congress rule, Babu said that none of the steps initiated by the TRS government in the power sector had seen the light of the day yet. He also alleged that the state government had utilized the funds sanctioned by the 14th Finance Commission to clear the electricity bills of the village panchayats.

Babu also said that the loan waivers for farmers were done over four installments resulting in the farmers being deprived of most of the benefit of the exercise. To offset some of that damage, he demanded that the state government extend the Rythu Bandhu scheme to tenant farmers. And while welcoming the decision of the state government to implement an unemployment allowance, he demanded some relief to the state government employees, too.

Leader of the House and Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao expectedly shot back saying that the allegations made by the Congress leader were false. He said that while Congress leader and former minister P Sabitha Indra Reddy had made some constructive suggestions, Sridhar Babu was talking only politics.

KCR claimed that he did not take any funds from the village panchayats. On the contrary, he said that the local bodies had plenty of dues from the days of the Congress rule, and that his government was trying to clear off all those dues.

He also asked the Congress if there was solar power during its rule, and said that the state was now producing 3,600 MW of solar power. He also said that Telangana topped the list of states in net power usage utilization.