Congress Leaders Confident in Budget Math for Promised Schemes, Assure Viability
Hyderabad: Congress leaders are confident that they have done the Budget math to account for the schemes being promised by them, given that the party had announced a waiver of Rs 2 lakh for farmers and promised to fill two lakh job vacancies.
TPCC working president Mahesh Kumar Goud said, “The party has done all the calculations in consultation with financial experts. The schemes we are proposing are fundable. The AICC has specifically told us not to make any unviable promises. All the allocations are within budgetary limits and accounted for.”
Former TPCC president Ponnala Lakshmaiah, when asked if the party had accounted for the schemes, said, “We have always fulfilled our promises. That is our track record. The BRS promised to construct 22 lakh houses costing Rs 1,32,000 crores in 2014, which is 70 per cent of the Budget. They further said they would give three-acre lands to 10 lakh Dalit families, which would cost Rs 1,50,000 crore, at even Rs 5 lakh per acre. There is no land available for that rate. We have always made promises we can implement.”
“The promises we are making are implementable, alongside the existing schemes. The exercise has been done,” said TPCC senior vice president Mallu Ravi.
Manthani MLA D. Sridhar Babu, a former minister, said: “What we are putting in our manifesto is done scientifically and rationally. The revenue will be streamlined and spent on the welfare and development of the people. We will plan our development and welfare schemes, and maintain balance between revenue and expenditure. We will not take loans left right and centre to fund our schemes because debt servicing takes away the revenues we generate in the form of interest.”
Asked which existing schemes will be slashed, given the experience of what the Karnataka government is doing, he said that there has been no discussion on doing away with any existing scheme.
“We haven’t discussed about removing any current schemes at all. We will emulate what we need from Karnataka. The social political dynamics of the two states are different,” Babu said.
The Congress has also promised to pay Rs 15,000 as Rythu Bandhu to farmers and Rs 12,000 to landless tenant farmers.
Asked if the party accounted for the financial constraints, given that their leader Komatireddy Venkat Reddy wrote to the BRS government to release pending Rythu Bandhu, M. Kodanda Reddy, vice president of the Congress’ Kisan Cell, said, “The Budget that is available is sufficient to keep all our promises.”
Asked if they plan to impose restrictions on Rythu Bandhu payments to NRIs and those who are not farmers to raise resources, he said: “The promises we made were done after making calculations. We will reduce wasteful expenditure like on using special flights and useless programmes which we cannot delve into at this stage. But we will stick to all the promises made by us.”
