Congress demands state government table white paper on state debt

Hyderabad: Congress demanded on Saturday that the state government come up with a White Paper on its borrowings. Stating that the capita debt now stood at Rs 1.21 lakh, because the state borrowings had reached Rs 5 lakh crore, A. Maheshwar Reddy, AICC programme implementation committee chairman, said the people had the right to know how much was being repaid to creditors and the time limit.

Releasing the fourth chargesheet in the Haath se Haath Jodo series, this time on the Budget, Maheshwar Reddy demanded that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao apologise for his failure to spend the Budget allocations. “He is making  afool out of the people each year by quoting high figures in the Budget when compared to actual spending,” the Congress leader said.

“The BRS government is boastful of its big Budget figures, but there remains a variation between Budget proposals and spending. On the other hand, the government is borrowing more as it has failed to find ways to increase state revenues. This flaw was pointed out by the Comptroller and Auditor General,” he said.

The Congress leader said that if the government was serious about implementing the loan waiver to farmers, it should come up with a plan of action and the required funds should be released immediately. Further he demanded a transparent programme for implementing Dalit Bandhu scheme and selection of beneficiaries.

“KCR should provide an explanation for the failure of the government to carry forward the unspent funds earmarked for SCs and STs. The CM also owes an explanation to unemployed youth who have failed to receive the unemployed allowance for the past three years. If the government has decided to do away with the scheme, it should formally come up with an announcement,” he demanded.