Economic anarchy prevailed during 10-yr BRS rule: Bhatti

Hyderabad: Refuting the allegations of the opposition that the government had taken loans indiscriminately, the Deputy Chief Minister Batti Vikramarka Mallu on Friday said that the Congress government had paid Rs 1,53,359 crore to repay the loans taken by the previous government and the actual loans taken by the government was just Rs 4,682 crore only.

The Deputy Chief Minister was replying to a discussion on the annual budget in the Assembly on Friday. Bhatti Vikramarka gave clarifications on various issues like budget allocations and releases, loans taken and other issues. He said that the government was paying for the loans and mistakes the BRS government had done for the last ten years. He said that the government had paid Rs 1,53,377 crore including Rs 88,591 crore principle amount and Rs 64,768 crore interest amount and the balance of Rs 4,682 crore was the actual loan the state government had taken.

The Finance Minister said that during the 10-year rule of BRS, the budget was never close to reality and because of this, a few sections had lost on a large scale. He said that the BRS leaders knew all the issues but kept people in the dark for 10 years and worked for vote bank politics. He said that the BRS government during 2014-15 proposed a budget of Rs 1,00,638 crore but spent Rs 62,306 crore and the unspent amount was Rs 38,332 crore. Similarly in the year 2015-16, they proposed a budget of Rs 1,15,689 crore and spent Rs 97,812 crore and the unspent money was Rs 17,878 crore which is 15.45 per cent. In 2023-24 budget proposed was Rs 2,90,396 crore and amount spent was Rs 2,31,825 crore. The gap was Rs 58,571 crore (20 per cent) in the income.

The Finance Minister said that every year the BRS government increased the estimates by 20 per cent whereas the Congress government increased just Rs 1,000 crore which is just 0.3 per cent between two budgets. This is a realistic budget, he said. “We cautiously stopped at 3.5 lakh crore. If we had increased the budget like you by 20 per cent – our budget would have been Rs 3,48,457,” said Bhatti Vikramarka.

He alleged that the BRS had no fiscal management. He quoted the CAG report stating that they have not taken approval of the Assembly and spent Rs 2,89,115 crore from 2014 to 2021-22. The BRS has spent Rs 16,70,711 crore in ten years but did not take up any constructive work. “There was economic anarchy in the BRS regime.

During the BRS rule, the BRS leaders did not behave democratically even for a single day. No one would have faced the insults we had to. When we tried to protest outside, there were house arrests,” said Bhatti. He ridiculed the BRS leaders’ allegations on Krishna waters, stating that it was the BRS which was responsible for the Rayalaseema Lift Irrigation project taken up by the AP government.