Budget is full of inflated figures: Shabbir Ali

Leader of Opposition in Telangana Legislative Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir said that the State's budget for 2016-17, presented by Finance Minister Eatala Rajender in Assembly and Deputy CM  Kadiyam Srihari in Council, was a compilation of inflated and unrealistic figures.

Speaking to media persons along with MLCs Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy, Farooq Hussain, Akula Lalitha and Damodar Reddy at Assembly Media Point on Monday, Shabbir Ali said that the budget of Rs. 1.30 lakh Crore was completely unrealistic. However, he said it does not matter even if TRS Government would have presented a budget of Rs. 2 lakh Crore. "Last year it presented a budget of Rs. 1.15 lakh crore. But the government did not spend even 50% of the allocated amounts. Similarly, most of the allocations made in 2014-15 remained unutilised. Therefore, this can be presumed that Rs. 1.30 lakh crore budget would remain on paper," he said.

Shabbir Ali strongly criticised the Finance Minister for not allocating any funds for 2BHK housing scheme. "We have repeatedly brought to the notice of government that it would need about Rs. 15,700 crore to construct 1 lakh houses in Hyderabad and another one lakh units in Urban areas. Instead of honouring its commitment by making sufficient allocations in the budget, the TRS Government has put the fate of 2BHK scheme on external agencies. This is an open cheating with the poor people who were expecting to get 2BHK houses this year," he said.

Simiarly, he said another flagship scheme, Mission Bhagiratha, got no funds in this budget. This scheme too has been linked with loans and borrowings from Central agencies and other institutions. "TRS Government is simply trying to shift the burden and blame on other agencies. If the government was serious, it should have allocated sufficient funds for 2BHK and Mission Bhagaritha. However, both the schemes were used to lure the people and their implementation was left to other agencies," he said.

Shabbir Ali said only Rs. 50 crore were increased in the budget for Minorities Welfare to take it to Rs. 1204 crore. However, this figure too is not relevant as the State Government did not utilise even 50% of funds allocated in the budgets during 2014-15 and 2015-16. Similarly, he said there was not a single head which reported 100% utilisation in 2015-16. Disclosing figures of 2015-16, he said under Plan Expenditure, only 46.43% funds were utilised for SC Welfare. Similarly, it ws 45.35% for Tribal Welfare, 74.78% for BC Welfare, 43.34% for Minorities Welfare and only 54.85% allocated for Agriculture Sector were utilised.

"While the State Government did not allocate any funds for 2BHK housing, it allocated Rs. 457 Crore for new buildings of Secretariat, Assembly, convention Centre, etc., Why we need new buildings when we are borrowing funds for weaker section housing?" he asked

He said that the budget figures were good reading and listening, but they are far from reality. He said that the Congress party would raise the issue of non-implementation of funds during the debate on budget.

Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy said that the budget had a hidden agenda of Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao. He said that the Chief Minister had kept a Special Development Fund of Rs. 4,675 Crore under his control. "This fund is meant to entertain TRS MLAs and other legislators who defecting from other parties to TRS," he said.

He also criticised the Finance Minister for praising Panchayat Raj Minister K. Tarakarama Rao in the budget speech. He said never in the past, any politician was named in the budget speech. He slammed the government for skipping the issue of drought assistance, farmers' suicides and fee reimbursement.