Promise, promise!: KCR to present promising budget this year

Hyderabad: The budget 2021-22 to be presented by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao would be formulated based on the promises he had made during the 2018 Assembly elections. A major chunk of the allocations would be made to implement those promises, according to sources.

The government has decided to make specific allocations to fulfil the promises like unemployment allowance, setting up of Reddy, Vaisya, Kapu, Gouda, Yadava and Mudiraj Corporations and free mechanized tools for farmers, farmers loan waiver, etc, is also on the cards. A senior official said that a study on the implementation of the promises was nearing completion.

After the TRS came back to power in the 2018 elections, the State government had fulfilled the first major promise of increase of cash incentive to Rs 5,000 from Rs 4,000 under the Rythu Bandhu scheme in 2019-20 budget outlay.

Another important promise it had made was waiver of farm loans up to Rs 1 lakh which requires more than Rs 25,000 crore. There has been a lot of criticism from the Congress and BJP that the government had failed to implement its assurances. It has now been decided to earmark the necessary funds for the purpose.

As TRS working president KT Rama Rao had already announced that the government is getting ready to implement the promise of extending unemployment allowance to the educated jobless youth, the state Finance department is busy working out the basic modalities with special allocations to the new schemes to be in force from the next financial year. The Chief Minister has promised monthly allowance of Rs 3,016 to every registered unemployed youth.

Another promise of reducing the age eligibility from 65 to 57 to avail the old-age pension under Aasra pension scheme was also under active consideration.

It requires nearly Rs 200 crore additionally per year to implement this scheme. Officials said that special schemes for the welfare and development of the poor amongst the forward castes would figure in the budget. The Chief Minister's recent announcement that the government would launch Dalit empowerment scheme with Rs 1,000 crore corpus fund would also be included in the proposals.