Education sector gets raw deal in tg budget, says panel

The Save Education Protection Committee–Telangana has demanded a 15 per cent increase in allocation for education in the state’s annual budget proposals tabled before the Assembly on Friday.

In a statement on Sunday, the President and Secretaries of the Telangana Save Education Committee, Prof.K.Chakradhar Rao, Prof. G. Haragopal and Prof K Lakshmi Narayana, expressed surprise that only 8.2 per cent of the total funds were allocated to the education sector in the budget introduced by the State Government.

They said it is unfortunate that, despite the demand from the Save Education Committee and Student, Teacher, and Lecturer Unions to allocate at least 20% funds to strengthen the Government Education System that was damaged during the previous BRS Government, the present government has failed to do so.

They also reminded that the Congress government has ignored its own manifesto promise to allocate 15% funds to education on par with other states. They stated that the government claims it will expand pre-primary education to 2,500 schools, but has not allocated even a single rupee in the budget, raising questions about the government’s sincerity.

The budget did not talk about providing infrastructure in government schools, the shortage of teachers (not even one teacher per class), and teacher training for pre-primary education. Naturally, they did not allocate any amount to them. The question is, in whose interest are they doing this?

In university education, instead of allocating at least Rs 500 crore for the development of each university, the government has allocated very small amounts: Rs 40 crore to Kakatiya University, Rs 35 crore to Mahatma Gandhi University, Rs 35 crore to Palamuru University, and Rs 25 crore to Telangana University. They expressed concern that the survival of these universities will become difficult.

They also analysed that the Congress government, which earlier criticised the TRS government for not spending the allocated funds, has itself allocated Rs 617 crore under the development head for higher education in 2024-25, but has really spent only Rs 46 crore, which is not even seven per cent.

Against this backdrop, the Telangana Save Education Committee has demanded that the priorities of the education sector be discussed and understood in the Assembly and that the allocation for education be increased to at least 15 per cent.