The fact was that the State government did not allocate its share to match the Centre's grant for the Smart Cities projects in Telangana, Kishan Reddy said.
Union Minister for Tourism & Culture G Kishan Reddy today said that the Telangana government was lying blatantly on the Smart Cities' funds released by the Centre to the State.
He said that all the important and critical ministries - Finance, Health, Medical & Family Welfare, Irrigation, Land & Revenue, Commercial Taxes, Mining, Municipal Administration and Urban Development, Industries, Information Technology, and Electronics & Communication - were being handled by members of one single family, resulting in massive mis-reporting of facts.
"Never before have so many ministerial and administrative powers been vested in one family in spite of poor performance. And despite both being run by members of the same family, the State government's Finance and Municipal Administration & Urban Development ministries seem to be giving conflicting information on Smart Cities," he said.
The union minister said that it was evident that the Kalvakuntla family of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao was deliberately propagating misinformation through the social media.
"The TRS government falsely claims that the Centre did not release even one rupee in the last three years for Smart Cities in Telangana. However, the fact is that the blame for that lies squarely on the State government, which did not allocate its share to match the grant for the Smart Cities projects in Telangana," he added.
Reddy said that Telangana had been allocated two Smart cities under the National Competitive Smart Cities Challenge by the Centre, with Warangal selected in May 2016 and Karimnagar through Round 3 in June 2017.
"The Smart Cities Mission is a Centrally-sponsored scheme with 50:50 contribution from the Government of India and the States. For the GoI to release subsequent installments, the State must release a share matching what the GoI has given for that Smart City, and at least 75% of funds should have been utilised for the city. By 2019-2020, the Centre had already released installments of Rs 392 crore of a total budgetary allocation of Rs 1,000 crore, but Telangana has been the most laggard State in transferring even the GoI's share to the Smart Cities," Reddy said.
He claimed that despite repeated follow-ups, the Telangana government had still not released its full share to the two Smart City projects.
"From the financial year 2015-2016 to 2019-2020, the government of Telangana neither made any matching grants nor efficiently utilised the amount released by the Government of India. Of the Rs 392 crore, approximately 80% of the funds were utilised in the last two financial years, and 40% of them were utilised in the last financial year of 2021-2022. aND the government of Telangana released its matching State share for the first time, six years late, in the previous budget of 2021-2022," he claimed.