Budget: Telangana officials burn midnight oil

Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had scrapped the entire Budget proposals drafted by the finance department headed by minister Etela Rajender citing it as a “routine one” and “cut and paste” of earlier Budgets and constituted 14 task forces with officials to prepare a fresh Budget with special focus on Telangana priorities.

Officials are spending more than 12 hours at the Secretariat to draft the budget proposals afresh. They are busy studying the newspapers’ clippings of Mr Rao’s speeches made during the past three months to know about his priorities and draft budget proposals accordingly.

Mr Rao had decided to postpone the maiden Budget session of the Assembly by a month from September first week to October first week to facilitate drafting of fresh budget. This is despite the fact that the present vote-on-account budget approved by the undivided state expires on September 30 and the government will not be in a position even to utilise single rupee from the treasury from October 1.

However, the Telangana government has decided to seek special permission from the Governor to utilise the funds in October till the budget gets approval.

The deadline has already been extended twice during the last two weeks as the officials failed to meet the expectations of the CM. The 14 task force committees were constituted for welfare, drinking water supply-sanitation, agriculture-dairy industry, industry-basic infrastructure development, human resources development, irrigation-water resources, energy, environment, law-administrative reforms, vigilance, resource mobilisation, law and order, urban develo-pment and rural development.