Congress charges govt with fudging of figures

​Hyderabad: Continuing its tirade against the government on the reprimands of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on budget management of the State, the Congress on Tuesday said the government should take moral responsibility for the exposures made by the CAG.

Speaking to the media, MLAs J Geetha Reddy and T Jeevan Reddy said the budget meetings had been held without the presence of the main Opposition party. Geetha Reddy said the errors in the budget preparation being taken place in the State Assembly had not occurred in any other State. The government deliberately cooked up figures in the account books, she said.

The MLAs pointed out that the budget figures had been inflated only to show that the Gross State Domestic Product was healthy. The government had shown the borrowings as revenue in the budget.

Though the government was supposed to give Rs 9,000 crore to the power distribution companies under UDAY scheme, only Rs 7,500 crores had been given and the rest had been presented as equity. The loan of Rs 1,000 crore being taken from HUDCO was also shown as revenue.

She said that the government was working in a deceitful manner and had been cheating the people and this should be considered as failure of the government and incompetence. If such practices were followed in the private sector, the culprits would be sent to prison.

The government was unable to repay the loans being taken for purchase of grains. The MLAs said that even the CAG officials had said the budget practices of the Telangana government were illegal and as many as Rs 10,000 crore had been kept in the PD accounts, whereas only a few hundreds of crores of rupees would be kept in them in other States, Geetha Reddy said.

MLA Jeevan Reddy said Telangana, which started its journey as surplus State, was made a debt ridden one. Though the government made heavy borrowings, even 50 per cent of the allocations had not been spent on SC, ST, BC and minorities’ welfare. While the government had presented Rs 1.20 lakh crore budget for 2016-17 financial year, it allocated Rs 80,000 crore for welfare, but even Rs 40,000 crore was not spent, he pointed out.

The government fudged the accounts only to get loans from the banks. The SC, BC, ST and minority sections would not pardon the government, he said adding that the ruling party had no moral right to continue in the government. The government had been spending money, being procured through loans, on works where commissions would come. With the Mission Bhagiratha, roads in the villages were destroyed, Jeevan Reddy said.