Hyderabad: Congress flays KCR for punishing government staff with wrong policies

Hyderabad: Former minister Mohammed Ali Shabbir on Sunday has alleged that Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao was punishing the government employees and pensioners for his own wrong economic policies and mismanagement.

Shabbir Ali, in a media statement, said that the KCR government has pushed the Telangana State into deep financial crisis and a huge debt trap. "Telangana had a huge revenue deficit by the end of February this year, long before the imposition of lockdown due to coronavirus. As against the Budget Estimates for 2019-20 of total receipts of Rs 1.37 lakh crore, the actual revenue was just Rs 1.15 lakh crore by the end of February 2020. This includes borrowings of Rs 26,559 crore. As per the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report, the fiscal deficit was of Rs 26,599 crore. Business was as usual in the first three weeks of March. Therefore, it is wrong to blame the last one week of lockdown for the present financial mess," he said.

The Congress leader blamed the indiscriminate loans taken by State government for various projects for present crisis. "The Telangana government spends Rs 22,393 crore on salaries and wages; Rs 9,122 crore on pensions and Rs 5,855 crore on subsidy every year. But, according to the Chief Minister himself, the State needs to spend Rs 37,000 crore towards loan repayments and interest. As per CAG report, Rs 11,856 crore were spent towards interests on various loans taken by the government. Consequently, he said now the State is forced to cut down salaries and pensions to ensure repayment of borrowed loans and their interest," he said.