KCR Hurting Employees, Pensioners For His Own Incompetence: Congress

Former minister and ex-Leader Of Opposition in the Telangana Legislative Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir alleged that Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao was punishing the government employees and pensioners for his own wrong economic policies and mismanagement.

Shabbir Ali said that the KCR government had pushed Telangana into a deep financial crisis and a huge debt trap.

"Telangana had a huge revenue deficit by the end of February this year, long before the imposition of the lockdown due to the coronavirus. As against the budget estimates for 2019-20 of total receipts of Rs 1.37 lakh crore, the actual revenue was just Rs 1.15 lakh crore by the end of February 2020. This included borrowings of Rs 26,559 crore. As per the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) report, the fiscal deficit was Rs 26,599 crore. Business was normal in the first three weeks of March. Therefore, it is wrong to blame the last one week of the lockdown for a financial mess that resulted in cutting salaries and pensions for March 2020," he said.

The Congress leader blamed the indiscriminate loans taken by the state government for various projects for the present crisis.

"The Telangana government spends Rs 22,393 crore on salaries/wages, Rs 9,122 crore on pensions and Rs 5,855 crore on subsidies every year. But according to the Chief Minister himself, the state needs to spend Rs 37,000 crore towards loan repayments and interest. As per the CAG report, Rs 11,856 crore were spent this year towards interests on various loans taken by the government. Consequently, the state has been forced to cut salaries and pensions to ensure repayment of borrowed loans and payment of interest," he said.

"The data released by the central government for the last quarter of the financial year 2019-20 clearly shows that the entire economy has seen a downward trend. The TRS government however still showed high growth - it clearly tampered with the statistics to show fake numbers and highlight Telangana as the richest state. This was done to cover up the huge loans which were taken at abnormally high interest rates in the name of various projects. Interestingly, the Telangana government was unable to pay full salaries and pensions to its employees in the same month that it declared the state the fastest growing state in the country," the Congress leader said.

Shabbir Ali said that it was highly regrettable that Telangana was the only state in the country which had cut pensions for the last three months.

"Pensioners are elders and most of them having old-age related diseases. They depend solely on their pensions to meet their daily expenses, and every penny counts for them. A major share of their pension amounts go towards the purchases of medicines. But the KCR government has turned so inhuman that it announced a pay cut of 50% in pension for the months of March and April," he said.

He pointed out that even the High Court had passed strictures against the state government for cutting pensions, and had asked it to have mercy on pensioners. However, KCR had turned so arrogant and merciless that despite the High Court orders he had again announced a cut in pensions by 25% for the month of May, Shabbir Ali said.

He demanded that the KCR government stop punishing the employees and pensioners for its own financial misdeeds, and pay their full dues. He also asked the Chief Minister when the deducted amounts would be cleared.