Hyderabad: Monday’s Union Budget was a big disappointment for the Telangana state government, which was looking forward to a host of benefits for the youngest state of the country.
Though Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao did not react publicly on the Budget, he held an emergency meeting with a few ministers and senior officials at his camp office to assess its impact on TS and its implications on the state’s annual Budget, set to be presented to the Legislature in the second week of March.
Mr Rao and finance minister Etela Rajender had visited New Delhi two weeks ago to submit a long wish-list to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and finance minister Arun Jaitley.
Mr Rao had specifically submitted a representation to Mr Modi seeking national status for the Pranahita-Chevella irrigation project.
There was also no mention about setting up an All India Institute of Medical Sciences and Indian Institute of Management as had been sought by the TS government in the Union Budget.
Another plea of the TS government, to exempt civic bodies like GHMC, and HMDA from income tax was also ignored.
The only consolation was a mention about the tribal university for which Rs 1 crore was allotted. The share of TS in Central taxes also remained more or less the same at Rs 13,955 crore.
What the state got in the Budget included Rs 20 crore for IIT-Hyderabad, Rs 1 crore for the new tribal university, Rs 15 crore for INCOIS, Rs 62 crore for the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Rs 60 crore for the Advance Research Centre.
TRS deputy floor leader B. Vinod Kumar said, “We did our best to secure national status for Pranahita project. It’s disappointing that the Centre ignored it again.”
