After days of intense deliberation, the Telangana Assembly today approved a Budget of Rs 2.30 lakh crore for 2021-22 by passing four bills. This marks the end of the year's Budget session.
Following the passing of the appropriation bill, Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy adjourned the house sine die.
The fiscal discussions, which
commenced on March 15, were held over nine days, and ran for 47 hours and 44 minutes.
Finance Minister T Harish Rao
presented the Budget to the Assembly. Both the treasury benches and members of the Opposition participated actively in examining the same and all 75 members shared a multitude of views and suggestions on the allocation proposals.
Through the deliberations, the ruling party made clear its commitment to social welfare. The state's ministers made various promises, including that the government would soon
set up 18 free diagnostic centres, would improve the
overseas education scholarship scheme, would focus on
industrialising the state further, and would soon
fill the much-discussed 50,000 government vacancies, in an attempt to reiterate this commitment.
The sessions also saw some heated exchanges. The Congress leaders repeatedly brought up the
lack of speaking time given to Opposition members while TRS MLA Rekha Naik and Congress MLA Seethakka
swapped bitter words over the issue of tribal development.
Some Opposition leaders also accused the TRS government of fudging financial figures, and for presenting an
"overly-optimistic" picture of Telangana's economic situation.
In response, the treasury benches maintained that the budgetary proposals had been made based on the fact that revenue collections had been growing.
What remains to be seen is how many of the promises made by the ruling party during the discussions are finally implemented.