Hyderabad: The Telangana state government is diverting crores of rupees collected as user charges from the public to the general Budget.
The state collects user charges from several departments such as education, medical& health, transport, stamps and registrations etc.
Every year, the state government is collect crores of rupees from the public for various services, but in actual fact, it spends a portion of the amount collected on the departments concerned.
In financial year 2014-15, the TS government collected Rs 828 crore as user charges but spent only Rs 28 crore. In financial year 2015-16, the state government collected Rs 1,607 crore as user charges but spent a mere Rs 44 crore. In the current financial year, the state government has collected about Rs 72 crore up to August and spent only Rs 6.62 crore.
The information received by Hyderabad city CPM secretary M. Srinivas in response to an RTI petition. As per the rules, if the government collects user charges in a government hospital, the funds collected should be spent on the development of that particular hospital or for improving facilities in that hospital.
However, the TS government has been diverting these funds for other purposes. In his RTI petition, Mr Srinivas sought information on the objective of collecting user charges and sought to know how the funds collected will be utilised.
He also sought information on user charges collected in undivided Andhra Pradesh state and also the money collected by the TS government after formation of Telangana state.
In its reply to Mr Srinivas’ petition, the TS finance department sent the particulars of user charges related to Telangana state.
For the other information regarding user charges collected in the combined state it advised him to approach the AP government. Meanwhile, Mr Srinivas demanded the TS government to withdraw the proposal of revising the user charges.
