Election-ready TS to go for vote on account

​Hyderabad: The Telangana government is contemplating to go in for vote-on-account budget this year. According to sources, the government feels that since the Union government was likely to present a vote-on-account budget in February and then issue notification for General Elections, the state government too should follow the same pattern as the details of the devolution of central funds to the state will not be clear and unless the state government knows what it would get from Centre it cannot make budgetary allocations. Hence it would be better to go in for vote on account, the government feels.

It is learnt that Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao on Saturday instructed state Finance department to examine the proposal on whether to go in for presenting a vote-on-account budget or a full-fledged budget for the next financial year 2019-20. The Chief Minister indicated that the Budget 2019-20 will accord top priority to education and medical and health sectors along with irrigation.

Directing officials of the Finance department to commence budget exercise for 2019-20 financial year, he asked the top officials to study the possibility of interim budget in the March and go for full budget at a later stage taking into consideration the policy framework of the next new government at the Centre.

KCR held a meeting with top officials of the Finance, Irrigation, Education, Health and medical departments and reviewed progress in the ongoing schemes. The CM said that his government was committed to fulfil all promises, including increasing of Aasara pensions.

Every promise made in the elections need to be implemented and hence necessary allocation of funds should be made in the budget. To fulfil the important election promise, a special directorate for pensioners will be constituted, he said. He also asked the officials to hold discussions with the retired employees to elicit their views.

The Chief Minister is said to have instructed officials concerned to hold medical camps for screening problems concerned with ear, nose, throat and dental as was done for eye screening through Kanti Velugu programme. He asked the officials to prepare an action plan to organise the camps from February. He also instructed to record the health profile of each and every individual after conducting all types of diagnostic tests. Based on this profile of every individual, the health status of Telangana should be prepared, the CM added.

KCR also instructed the officers concerned to expedite completion of the Lift Irrigation projects of Kaleswaram, Palamuru- Rangareddy, Sitarama, Dindi, Sri Ram Sagar revival scheme etc. He asked the officials to prepare a draft report on the status of each project, requirement of funds, drawbacks etc. He made it clear that adequate budget will be provided to irrigation sector in addition to mobilizing funds from various sources in the next budget.

Chief Advisor to the Government Rajiv Sharma, Advisor Anurag Sharma, Chief Secretary SK Joshi, senior officers S Narsing Rao, Rama Krishna Rao, Rajeshwar Tiwari, Vikas Raj, Shanti Kumari, Smita Sabharwal, Neetu Prasad and Govt Whip Palla Rajeshwar Reddy participated in the meeting.