TS Budget Unrealistic & Misleading: Shabbir Ali

Hyderabad, March 8 (Maxim News): Senior Congress leader Mohammed Ali Shabbir described State budget for 2020-21 financial year presented by Finance Minister T. Harish Rao in the Assembly on Sunday, as completely unrealistic, fictitious and imaginary.

Addressing the media at Gandhi Bhavan along with senior leaders MLA Seethakka, former Union minister Balram Naik, former MPs Mallu Ravi, T. Rajaiah and Konda Vishveshwar Reddy, former MLA T. Rammohan and others, Shabbir Ali said there was an increase by a whopping Rs 40,762 crore in the budget compared to the revised budget last year. He said Rs 182,914 crore budget was totally unrealistic and misleading. He pointed out that Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao presented an Vote-on-Account budget of Rs 1,82,017 crore for 2019-20 in February 2019.

Shabbir Ali said the TRS Government derives some pleasure in misleading the people with wrong statistics and misleading data. He said it makes allocations under various heads and at the end of financial year, it spends nothing. Citing instances, he said Rs. 6,000 were allocated in the budget for 2019-20 for farm loan waiver. This remained unspent and this year too Rs. 6,225 crore have been allocated for the purpose. Similarly, Rs. 500 crore were earmarked for Unemployment Allowance. But in this year budget, this head has been completely removed and there was no mention of unemployment or youth in the entire budget speech.

Shabbir Ali also slammed the TRS Government for slashing the budget for minorities’ welfare. He said Rs. 1884.43 Cr were allotted in 2018-19 and it was reduced to Rs. 1369 Cr in 2019-20 citing economic slowdown. This year, it has been confined to Rs. 1,518 Crore. “When the State Government can increase its spending by over Rs. 40,000 crore on other Heads, then why the minorities welfare budget was slashed compared to 2018-19?” he asked. (Maxim News)