TS Assembly passes Appropriation Bill

Hyderabad: The Telangana Appropriation (vote-on-account) Bill, 2024 and The Telangana Appropriation Bill, 2024 were passed by the Assembly on Thursday with the House approving Rs 78,911 crore to meet the essential expenditure for the first four months of 2024-25 (April-July) fiscal and Rs 46,400 crore as additional expenditure during 2023-24.

Deputy Chief Minister and finance minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, who introduced the bills, said that the Congress government has introduced a 'realistic budget' of Rs 2.75 lakh crore for 2024-25 against the Rs 2.90 lakh crore budget presented by the BRS government for 2023-24.

He said that the BRS government had presented budgets with inflated figures by increasing outlay by 20 per cent year after year.

"Every year there used to be a huge gap of 20 to 25 per cent between the budgetary allocations and the actual expenditure, which proves that they came up with unrealistic figures just for the sake of presenting jumbo budgets. We will present realistic budgets while ensuring that the gap is not more than five to eight per cent (considered as an acceptable limit) between budgetary allocations and actual expenditure," Bhatti stated.

Pointing out that the BRS government presented ten budgets totalling Rs 14,87,834 crore from 2014 to 2023, Bhatti pointed out that it had actually spent Rs 12,25,326 crore, while an overwhelming Rs 2,62,518 crore remained unspent.

"The unspent funds were those which were allocated to poor and marginalised sections for various welfare schemes like Dalit Bandhu and 2BHK housing scheme, among others. This eventually resulted in imposing cuts on welfare schemes," he said.

Bhatti stated that the Congress government allocated Rs 53,196 crore for implementation of its six guarantees as per preliminary estimates and funds would be increased in the full budget slated to be presented in August.

"We received over 1.25 crore applications from people for the six guarantees. We are currently undertaking door to door verification to identify the genuine beneficiaries. We will come to know the exact number of beneficiaries and the funds required thereof, once this exercise is completed. We will, accordingly, allocate funds for the six guarantees," Bhatti said.