HYDERABAD: Congress MP N. Uttam Kumar Reddy demanded on Friday that the state government release a White Paper on the state's financial situation, claiming that it was on the verge of bankruptct and had no funds to spend on welfare schemes.
While Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao tried to cover up the financial mismanagement with political statements, he said, the BJP government at the Centre was trying to financially crush Telangana by not releasing funds and imposing fiscal restrictions.
Uttam Kumar Reddy, a former TPCC chief, scoffed at the CM’s claim that the restrictions on additional borrowings were to blame for the financial crisis and claimed that the state's finances had been in disarray since the beginning. But the TRS government had used inflated figures, manipulated data, and even tampered with facts, to portray Telangana as the richest state. “A large portion of revenues was being spent towards payment of installments for bad loans and huge interests,” he said.
The annual state Budgets, he claimed, were, "unrealistic and based on huge assumptions rather than actual revenues". He noted that Telangana had a debt of Rs. 69,000 crore accumulated over a 60-year period. "Due to KCR's financial mismanagement over the last eight years, the debt has risen to more than Rs. 4 lakh crore. The per capita debt has risen from Rs. 18,157 in 2014-15 to more than Rs. 1 lakh," he claimed.
He advised the CM to bring in financial experts to discuss and formulate solutions to the financial crisis. "Before convening the Assembly session, the TRS government should issue a White Paper outlining accurate figures for revenues, loans, and projected expenditures. The current crisis cannot be solved by making political statements and resorting to blame games,” he insisted.
On the issue of double bedrooms, he stated that 2BHKs were built in some areas and their photographs were used for publicity to give the impression that all 2.76 lakh 2BHK units had been built. According to the TRS government's Intensive Household Survey, nearly 22 lakh families in Telangana do not own a home, he claimed.
