TRS To Double Telangana's Debt In 3 Years: Congress

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President N Uttam Kumar Reddy accused the TRS government of slowly pushing the entire Telangana State into a debt trap through mismanagement of finances.

Reddy said that Telangana had inherited debts of Rs. 61,710 crores at the time of its formation on June 2, 2014. With a population of 3.5 crores as per the 2011 Census, the per capita debt was Rs. 17,626.72.

"With its utter mismanagement and immature approach, the TRS government has accumulated huge additional debt in a period of just 21 months. It had increased the debt to Rs. 83,845 crores in 2014-15, and to Rs. 100,707 crores in 2015-16. Finance Minister Etala Rajender, in his budget speech for Telangana for 2016-17, has proposed to borrow another Rs. 23,113 crores. This will increase the per capita debt in Telangana to Rs. 35,373.72, while taking the total borrowings to Rs. 123,821.49 crores," he said.

The TPCC chief said that the TRS government was thus increasing the debt on each citizen every passing day.

"In addition to the debt that we inherited due to the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, by the end of 2016-17, the TRS government would have borrowed an additional Rs. 62,111 crores since June 2, 2014. Thus, at an average Rs. 60 crore would have been borrowed each day to run the government for the 1,043 days till March 31, 2017. The present average of borrowing during the last 653 days is Rs. 59 crores," he said.

Reddy said that the State government had always kept the people, including the Opposition parties, in the dark about the real financial situation. "Our demands for a White Paper on the State's finances or at least an all-Party meet on the issue have been rejected. It is strange that the Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has had to himself get involved in managing the State's finances, as mentioned in the Budget speech by Rajender himself," he commented.

The TPCC chief said that the Congress would raise the issue both inside and outside of the Assembly, and would not allow TRS government to push Telangana and its citizens into a debt trap.