Hyderabad: The Telangana government’s first full fledged Budget (2015-16), which will be presented in the Assembly next week, will reveal if the TRS government will go for a “realistic budget” or stick to the grandiose “Rs 1 lakh crore budget”.
The maiden Budget last November, for a 10-month period, was a “Rs 1-lakh crore Budget. However, the government has hardly been able to spend 30 per cent of it so far even as the March 31 deadline is nearing. While all the departments put together submitted proposals over Rs 3 lakh crore this time, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao himself stepped in to draft the Budget.
At a recent press meet in the Secretariat, Mr Chandrasekhar Rao admitted that the government failed to meet the Budget targets for 2014-15 since the estimates projected were “too high” and the time of four months from December to March was short. He has been holding a marathon meeting with officials of the finance department at the National Academy of Construction since the last four days.
“TS Water Grid and Mission Kakatiya require Rs 25,000 crore and Rs 40,000 crore respectively over five years. The CM is working out opt-ions,” said Etela Rajender, finance minister.
There are separate chambers for the CM, who is the chairman of NAC. However, none of the CMs in undivided AP, since 2001, when the NAC was set up, used these chambers like Mr Chandrasekhar Rao is doing now. Even the NAC executive body meetings used to be conducted at the Secretariat for the convenience of the CM.
However, Mr Chandrasekhar Rao has been finding NAC an ideal location to prepare the Budget as he feels that there is a lot of disturbance at the Secretariat due to continuous flow of visitors to his peshi.
“TS Water Grid and Mission Kakatiya are the flagship programmes of the TRS government. We have expected 50 per cent funding from the Centre for these schemes in the recent Union Budget but it did not happen. The government wants to ensure adequate funds for both these schemes to see that they meet deadlines, which require Rs 25,000 crore and Rs 40,000 crore respectively over a period of five years. The CM is working out various options over meeting the funds as part of Budget exercise,” said Etela Rajender, the minister for finance.
In the previous Budget, Rs 2,000 crore each was allotted for both these schemes, but could not be spent as the projects are still under tenders-stage.
