TRS Government spending only Rs 147 a month for minorities: Congress

Hyderabad: Former minister Mohammed Ali Shabbir on Monday strongly condemned TRS government for not spending the allocated budget for the welfare of minorities.

The per capita expenditure on minorities' welfare in the State was only Rs 147 a month, he claimed in a statement. The government was deliberately delaying the release of welfare funds as part of a conspiracy to stall the development of minorities.

"Not even 15 per cent of Rs 1,602 crore allocated in the budget for 2021-22 has been released in the last five months. The government has been cheating Muslims on the welfare budget since 2014 by not releasing even 50 per cent of the allocated amount.

Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's claim of Rs 2,000-crore budget for minorities' welfare was fake and misleading," he charged.

The Congress leader said that the TRS government has allocated Rs 11,052 crore for the minorities welfare in eight annual budgets from 2014-15 to 2021-22. However, it released only Rs 5,772.51 crore in the last seven years.

The estimated population of Telangana in 2021 is 3.51 crore, while the Muslim population is about 48.45 lakh (12.70 per cent). "Even if the overall spending on minorities' welfare is rounded off to Rs 6,000 crore, then TRS government has spent only Rs 147 a month on each Muslim in the State."