Let us not indulge in politics and curse our own State, KTR tells Congress

The Congress government, while indulging in petty politics, should not curse or malign the State that was achieved after a long tough struggle, BRS working president KT Rama Rao.

Hyderabad: Presenting facts and figures in the Assembly, BRS working president KT Rama Rao on Wednesday exposed the State government’s claims of Telangana being debt-ridden and argued that on the contrary, the State was healthy as far as its finances were concerned. The Congress government, while indulging in petty politics, should not curse or malign the State that was achieved after a long tough struggle.

Speaking on the Appropriation Bill, Rama Rao pointed out that in 2014, the revenue surplus was Rs.369 crore and the same had grown to Rs.5,944 crore in 2022-23. Even in the budget presented by the State government, the revenue surplus was Rs.297 crore, which disproved the false campaign of the Congress that the State was debt-ridden. Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka had said in the House that the State government was forced to take loans for paying salaries. In that case, was the revenue surplus of Rs.297 crore mentioned in the budget fake or was it the Congress narrative that was false, he asked.

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Citing statistics on economic indicators from the Socio-Economic Outlook tabled in the House and the Budget, he said Telangana ranked among the top three States with 84 percent State Owned Tax Revenue. This meant that the State was not dependent on others or the union government for grants. “Let us not indulge in politics and curse our own State. It does not augur well and investors will be discouraged to invest in Telangana,” Rama Rao said.

Interrupting his speech, Bhatti Vikramarka admitted that the revenue receipts were good but asked why salaries were delayed to employees from 2021. To this, the BRS working president replied that the first Covid case was detected in Hyderabad on March 2, 2020. Till then, salaries were paid on time but after the pandemic, the economy was hit and salaries were delayed a bit, he said, adding that despite the financial constraints, Aasara pensions, Kalyana Lakshmi and Rythu Bandhu disbursals were not stopped with the available funds being used for welfare programmes.

Listing out in detail the achievements of Telangana as a State in the last decade, Rama Rao reminded the House that the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) had soared from Rs.4 lakh crore in 2014 to Rs.14.64 lakh crore in 2023-24. The Per Capita Income grew from Rs.1.24 lakh in 2014-15 to Rs.3.47 lakh in 2023-24, which was Rs.1.64 lakh higher than the national per capita income. Telangana was the largest state with the highest per capita income in the country. The State’s contribution to the GDP also increased from 4.1 per cent in 2014 to 5 per cent in 2023-24, he said, adding that despite all the mudslinging by the Congress, with 74 per cent development expenditure, Telangana was at the number one position in the country.

Rejecting the claim of the Congress that the previous BRS government had pushed a revenue surplus state into a debt trap, Rama Rao asked the government to show the assets created by the previous government along with the debts. Stating that the Congress government was trying to mislead the House with wrong statistics, he said debts of only Rs.3.85 lakh crore were raised during the BRS regime. Telangana’s debt to GSDP ratio was only 27.8 per cent, while there were about 15 States that had higher debt-GSDP ratios. Even the Centre’s debt-GDP ratio was 59 per cent. The share of debts in the State’s GSDP was 14.4 per cent in 2014 and the same had gone up to 27.8 per cent in 2022-23. Borrowing for investment in productive sectors was not wrong, he said, asserting that it was an investment for the future.

Rama Rao also pointed out that the Congress had assured Rs.12 lakh under Dalit Bandhu, Rs.20,000 crore towards BC welfare and monthly assistance of Rs.2500 to women but there were no allocations in the budget. On the other hand, pensions were being recovered from elderly persons. The government should work as a development agent and not as a recovery agent, he said.

He also criticised the Congress for taking credits for jobs created by the BRS government by handing over just the appointment orders.

“I will resign and quit politics if one youngster admits that these jobs were given by the Congress,” he said, asking Bhatti Vikramarka to join him in a visit to Ashoknagar to interact with jobseekers.