TS budget is weird: says BJP’s Gudur 

Hyderabad, February 8: Bharatiya Janata Party state senior leader Gudur Narayana Reddy on Wednesday termed the state budget as a weird one as it was impractical and hypothetical. 
In a media statement he said that the budget being presented by State Finance Minister T Harish Rao to the Assembly on February 6 was just a game of numbers. “The government could not justify the numbers it has mentioned in the budget as they were hypothetical,” he said. 
The BJP leader said that the annual finance statement of the state government, which has lot of importance, has failed to enthuse anyone in the state. He said, “It seems that the government considered presentation of budget as just an obligatory ritual and completed it without care.” 
He said that the budget failed to project the state as happening one and also failed to create an aura of optimism among the investors. The budget contains nothing which would ensure progress of the economy of the state. 
He said that the state government under the leadership of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao has tried to inflate the budget with hypothetical numbers. He said that there was no substance in the annual finance statement. 
“If the budget figures of the state government for the past 9 years are taken into consideration, the government never met, except tow times, the estimated revenues or the estimated expenditure,” he said. 
He said that the government wants to run the state with the help of loans from the open market and through non tax revenues. He said that the total loans being taken by the government, directly or through the corporations, was Rs 4.86 lakhs crores. He said that it has allocated Rs 35,013 crores for payment of interests principal in this financial year and reminded that payment of interest and principal of the loans of corporations has to be added to this figure. 
He said that if the interests and principal payments and general expenditure in the form of salaries and others are added they would be about 60 per cent of the budget and only 40 per cent would reach the people. 
He said that Centre should take steps to make K Chandrasekhara Rao to cough out the commissions he has taken through the construction of projects and that amount would take care of payment of interests and principal. 
He said that the government’s own revenue through taxes has been projected as Rs 1.31 lakh crores in the budget for FY 2023-24 whereas it has projected the expenditure as Rs 2.90 lakh crores and God knows how the government would fill a gap of Rs 1.59 lakh crores of rupees. “It is clear that the government depended on unrealistic Centrral grants, loans, excise revenue, revenue through the stamps and registrations and sale of government lands to bridge the gap. This is nothing but bankruptcy,” he said. 
Narayana Reddy said that though the government has presented a budget of Rs 2.56 lakh crores for the financial year 2022-23, the expenditure may not cross Rs 2.37 lakh crores. The expenditure may fall short of Rs 19000 crores. In the same way the government could not spend the entire budget being announced in the FY 2023-24. 
On the other hand the state government has been trying hard to blame the Centre for the lack of growth of the state saying that the Centre was not granting funds. “It is ridiculous that the state government has been asking thousands of crores of rupees from the centre notwithstanding the constraints under which the Centre works. This is a pure attempt to blame the Centre,” he said.