Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader, Bhatti Vikramarka has termed this year’s budget as jugglery of figures to mislead people, and asked the government as to how it can project 29% growth over last year financial year when it had scaled down the same by 24% this year citing economic crisis.
“How can minus 24% budget of 2019-20 financial year over the previous year can suddenly see 29% growth in 2020-21 year,” he asked at a press conference. Mr. Bhatti who spoke along with MLAs — D. Sreedhar Babu, T. Jaiprakash Reddy, Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy — and MLC T. Jeevan Reddy said the government was just showing unrealistic figures.
When the state was formed in 2014 with a surplus budget the government showed 15% growth in 2015-16 year, 13% in 2016-17 year; 15% in 2017-18 year and 17% in 2018-19 year, he said adding that citing economic slowdown the government presented a budget with minus 19% rate of growth in 2019-20.
When the country is still facing economic crisis, how was it possible to expect 29% growth over last year, he wondered and asked the Chief Minister to stop misleading the people. In fact, the Chief Minister has been blaming the BJP government at the Centre for the economic crisis, he reminded and said this budget is not only unrealistic and fictitious but also absolutely misleading.
Mr. Bhatti alleged that even in the previous budgets the government projected huge allocations but did not release the money. There is no allocation for unemployment dole that CM promised and also the three-acres land for Scheduled Castes, he said.
The Congress MLAs reminded that last year ₹ 6,000 crore was allocated for farm loan waiver but the amount remained unspent and this year too ₹ 6,225 crore has been allocated for the same purpose. In the last budget ₹ 500 crore were earmarked for unemployment dole but not a single penny was released and this year not a single rupee has been allocated for it.
At a separate press conference, former Minister Shabbir Ali said budget for 2019-20 was presented with ₹ 1,42,152 crore but the overall revenues till the end of January 2020, as per CAG, were ₹ 1,05,992 crore, including loans of ₹ 26,383 crore. This may not even reach the set target in the next two months and may stay around ₹ 1.10 lakh crore.
How can the government present a budget of ₹ 1.82 lakh crore for 2020-21, when state revenues are just about ₹ 1.10 lakh crore this year, he asked. “Where will the government get the additional revenues of Rs. 70,000 crore in the next one year,” he questioned.
