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Opposition concerned over rising debt
Opposition parties on Friday charged the Telangana government with failure to maintaining fiscal discipline and pushing the state in to a debt trap within two years after the formation of Telangana. The members expressed serious doubts over the utilisation of funds allocated under Plan budget this year also as the government had failed to reach the target set in the last two budgets.
Hyderabad: Opposition parties on Friday charged the Telangana government with failure to maintaining fiscal discipline and pushing the state in to a debt trap within two years after the formation of Telangana. The members expressed serious doubts over the utilisation of funds allocated under Plan budget this year also as the government had failed to reach the target set in the last two budgets.
Participating in the debate on Budget 2016-17 in the Assembly, TDP leader and MLA R Revanth Reddy said the previous 16 chief ministers in the erstwhile united AP took loans amounting to nearly Rs 69,000 crore in a period of 63 years. While the present Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao alone has taken Rs 1.5 lakh crore loans in less than two years for the construction of power projects, housing and water grid programme.
“Before the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, each person carried a debt burden of Rs 69,000 crore. Now, it will go up Rs 1.5 lakh crore additionally,” he said and questioned the Chief Minister's actions for allocating Rs 4,675 crore towards Special Development Fund (SDF) which would be under his control.
The TDP leader demanded that the fund be utilised to clear off dues of crop loan waiver schemes. Since the government has already allocated funds for third installment, another amount of Rs 4,250 crore from the fund should be utilised to pay the fourth installment of the crop loan waiver scheme. He said there was no need for the Chief Minister to keep such a huge fund under his control.
Stating that the Telangana has been experiencing severe drought for the last two years, Revanth said instead of extending full-fledged assistance to farmers, the government has divided the crop loan amount into four installments while keeping poor farmers trapped in debt burden for four years. He said that the Chief Minister should keep a maximum of Rs 500 crore under the Special Development Fund only.
BJP floor leader K Lakshman said, out of the Rs 1 lakh crore budget for 10 months during 2014-15, only Rs 62,306 crore was spent. Similarly, of the Rs 1.15 lakh crore in 2015-16, only Rs 85,000 crore has been spent. He feared that the budget of Rs 1.3 lakh crore for 2016-17 would meet the same fate and the government would not be able to spend more than Rs 85,000 crore to Rs 90,000 crore.
"The government presented a huge budget without considering the failures in implementing the previous two budgets," he said. Terming the 2016-17 budget as “houseful – collection nil”, the BJP leader said that the budget was too imaginary and jugglery of figures. He alleged that the TRS government did not concentrate on spending the entire budget during the last two years by mobilising and strengthening all resources.
