Gudur ridicules ‘weird’ state budget

Hyderabad: Senior BJP leader Gudur Narayana Reddy on Wednesday described the state budget as a ‘weird one’ as it was impractical and hypothetical.

“The government could not justify the numbers it has mentioned in the budget as they were hypothetical,” he said.

He said that the government wants to run the state with the help of loans from the open market and through non-tax revenues. He said that the total loans taken by the government, directly or through corporations, were to the tune of Rs 4.86 lakh crore. He said that it has allocated Rs 35,013 crore for payment of interests’ in the financial year and reminded that payment of interest and principal amounts of the loans from corporations has to be added to this figure.

He said that if the interests and principal payments and general expenditure in the form of salaries and others are added they would be about 60 per cent of the budget and only 40 per cent would reach the people.

He said that the Centre should take steps to make Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao cough out the commissions he has taken through construction of projects. This would take care of payment of interests and the principal amounts.

He said that the government’s own revenue through taxes has been projected at Rs 1.31 lakh crore in the budget for FY 2023-24 whereas it has projected the expenditure at Rs 2.90 lakh crore. One wonders how the government will fill the gap of Rs 1.59 lakh crore. “It is clear that the government depended on unrealistic Central grants, loans, excise revenue, revenue through stamps and registrations and sale of government lands to bridge the gap. This is nothing but indicative of bankruptcy,” he said.

Narayana Reddy said that though the government has presented a budget of Rs 2.56 lakh crore for the financial year 2022-23, the expenditure may not cross Rs 2.37 lakh crore. The expenditure may fall short by 19,000 crore, he said.