Budget disappointed all sections: Mohammed Ali Shabbir

Hyderabad: Former minister Mohammed Ali Shabbir said that the Telangana Budget 2023-24 presented by Finance Minister T Harish Rao in Assembly on Monday has disappointed all sections of the society. He said people had a lot of expectations as this was the last budget to be presented by KCR Govt before the next Assembly elections. However, he said Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao disappointed all the sections of the society by not making sufficient allocations for core sectors like education, Health, or Welfare.

Shabbir Ali said there was no major increase in the budget for the Health and Education sectors as they got only 5-6% of the total allocation. Further, he said that Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Backward Classes and Minorities welfare remained neglected in the budget. While SCs got only 7.23% of the total budget, the STs got just 1.3%, BCs got only 2.14% and the Minorities Welfare got just 0.75% of the total budget. He said these allocations were not at all enough to implement the major schemes for their welfare.

The Congress leader said that the budget allocation and the spending for the welfare of any community get assessed based on the percentage and not the amount. However, he said Harish Rao tried to ridicule the minority communities by stating that the State government had spent Rs. 8,581 crores from June 2014 to January 2023.