Unrealistic, Hopeless Budget: Telangana Congress

Deputy CLP leader in the Legislative Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir described Telangana's Budget for the financial year 2015-16 as unrealistic and completely hopeless.

Speaking to media persons at the Legislative Council's media point after the presentation of the budget in the council by Deputy CM Kadiam Srihari on Wednesday, Shabbir Ali said that the figure of Rs. 1,15,689 crores sounded good, but was very far from reality.

He said that the government had presented a similar budget of Rs. 1,00,637 crores for the financial year 2014-15. But it did not spend even 50% of the total allocations. The figure of more than Rs. 1 lakh crores was being used only to mislead the people, he said.

Shabbir Ali said that Finance Minster Etela Rajender did not explain the sources through which he planned to raise the amounts to spend Rs. 63,306 crores under Plan and Rs. 52,383 crores under Non-Plan expenditure. He also ridiculed the claim that it was a Rs. 531 crores surplus budget. He said that a similar claim was made in 2014-15, of having a surplus budget of Rs. 301 crores. He said that Telangana had however got only 65% of funds under Plan and 14% under Non-Plan as Central Assistance.

The Finance Minister did not also elaborate on the injustice done to Telangana by the 14th Finance Commission, he added. And the claims of Telangana being a revenue surplus state would prompt the Centre to stop releasing funds, he cautioned.

The Congress leader said that the Finance Minister had admitted that the agriculture sector had registered a negative growth of 10.3%. While the production of food grains had reduced by 19%, the oil seeds productions had dipped by 11%. Since Telangana was an agrarian state, this would have a multiplier impact on the entire economy. However, these factors were ignored in the budget speech, he said.

"One the one hand, the TRS government is describing Telangana as a revenue-surplus state. And on the other, it allocated only Rs. 4,250 crores towards the second installment of the crop loan waiver scheme. The government should clear the entire amount of the crop loans in one stroke and provide total relief to the farmers," he said.

Further, he pointed out that no amount had been allocated for the families of the farmers who had committed suicides. He said that the provision of Rs. 8,432 crores for agriculture and allied sectors was insufficient.

Speaking about the welfare provisions, he said that although there had been a marginal increase in the budget for almost all the sectors, the Finance Minister did not promise that the unspent amount of the previous budget would be carried forward. He said that almost 75% of the amount allocated in 2014-15 for the welfare of the SC, ST, BC and minority communities had remained unspent. He reminded that Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao had assured in the Legislative Council that the government would carry forward all the unspent amounts to next budget. However, the budget speech was silent about that assurance.

He also slammed the State Government for making no mention of providing 12% reservation for Muslims and Scheduled Tribes.

The former Energy Minister also slammed Etela for allocating just Rs. 7,400 crores for the energy sector although the government was proposing to add 19,355 MW of power by 2018. It would take huge investments and at least 4-5 years to set up a power plant, he said, and with mere allocations, the government would not be able to achieve its target.

Referring to the speech made by the Chief Minister in the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday, he challenged KCR to provide 9-hour power supply to farmers besides addressing the needs of industrial, domestic and other sectors.

"No major change will happen till March 2016, and KCR's promise will fail. Let the Chief Minister accept my challenge and prove me wrong," he said. (INN)