Telangana Govt in a fix over budget preps

Hyderabad: As the budget preparation for 2024-2025 financial year is set to begin from Thursday, the State Government is in a catch-22 situation. The main worry for the government is that the new sops which the government wants to incorporate in the budget proposals may amount to violation of the election code which would be announced during the first half of February.

The Government was planning to announce a slew of sops in addition to the six Guarantees which consists of enhancement of the Rythu Bandhu incentive, Rs 2,500 monthly financial assistance to women, 200 units of free power supply to poor, Indiramma houses and two lakh jobs by December 2024.

Official sources said that all the departments have been asked to submit the proposals for allocations and also the expenditure incurred in the current financial year. “The practice of holding meetings with all departments by the state Finance officials to finalise the budget estimations was stopped five years ago during the BRS regime,” said the sources.

“Now, the state government resumed the meetings with all wings to prepare a realistic budget for the new financial year”, an official said. The state government did not send any wish list to the Centre in view of the presentation of the vote-on-account in Lok Sabha in the election period in February.

Sources said that the government was consulting the legal and election experts to seek their opinion on the presentation of the budget. Since the preparatory meetings would continue till the end of January, it may not be possible to present the budget in the first week of February. It is felt that the poll notification may be announced soon after the vote-of-account session of Lok Sabha ends on February 9.

The code would come into force once the notification was announced. In such a situation, the government will not be able to make any announcement regarding new freebies and make allocations in the budget. A final decision on the budget dates would be taken after Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy returns from his Davos visit. The only way it can avoid violation of the poll code is to convene the budget session and introduce the budget before Feb 9.