Congress blames KCR for economic crisis in TS: Mohammed Ali Shabbir

Hyderabad: Congress senior leader and former Leader of Opposition in Telangana Legislative Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir on Sunday strongly condemned Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao for his late reaction to the economic crisis in Telangana.

Shabbir Ali, in a media statement, said it was shocking that the Chief Minister has realised about the effects of economic slowdown after end of eight months in the current financial year. "While the entire world was talking about economic slowdown, the Chief Minister was making false claims about zero impact.

Finally, in September this year, the State government came up with a full-fledged budget for 2019-20 while cutting down expenditure by over 30 per cent. As against the Vote on Account budget of Rs 1.82 lakh crore presented on February 22 this year, the full budget was of Rs 1.46 lakh crore wherein the State government reduced the annual expenditure by Rs 35,525 crore," he said while adding that the State government now appears to be in no position to spend even Rs 1.46 lakh crore.

Citing unaudited provisional figures of Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), Shabbir Ali said that as against the estimated Tax Revenues of Rs 1.14 lakh crore during the year 2019-20, the collections up to October was just Rs 51,355 crore or just 45.41 per cent. This includes Rs 6,404 crore towards State's Share of Union Taxes.

Similarly, Non-Tax-Revenue was a mere 15.38 per cent (Rs 2,442 cr) of original estimation (Rs 15,875 cr). However, he said the government was not going slow on borrowings from different resources thus pushing the State in a huge debt trap. He said from April-October this year, the State government has borrowed Rs 17,500 crore.

Shabbir Ali said that the Chief Minister has caused huge damage by wrongly calling Telangana a rich and revenue surplus State. By doing so, he deprived the State from various Central funds.

He said that Chandrashekar Rao was too late in reacting to the financial situation. He said he must have directed TRS MPs to raise the issue since the beginning of Parliament session last month.