Hyderabad: The Telangana State government has blamed the Centre and the AP government at the Supreme Court of not releasing more than `2,000 crore in accordance with the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014.
The government filed a counter affidavit before the apex court pursuant to its direction in a PIL by Congress leader Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy, seeking a direction to the Centre to implement the AP Reorganisation Act provisions in letter and spirit and fulfil the promises that then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made during the bifurcation of AP of according special status.
Mr K. Ramakrishna Rao, principal secretary, general administration, in his counter affidavit, said that Section 46 of the Reorganisation Act dealt with the distribution of revenue between the two successor states.
The Centre had apportioned the balance award amount between the two states but the apportioned share of Telangana state was not released in full, due to non-holding of gram panchayat elections on time, though the fact was that these elections could not be held due to a court stay. They were conducted after one-and-a-half years on vacation of the stay orders.
The official informed the court that as against Rs 3,138.72 crore apportioned to Telangana, only Rs 2,012.64 crore was released by the Centre and the balance of Rs 1,131.62 crores not released. He submitted that the finance ministry did not consider the request of state government to release the balance.
Mr Rao told the court that the Centre had released discretionary grants for implementation of various ongoing Centrally sponsored schemes (CSS) in the combined state by way of 55 sanctions, but the amounts were credited to the account of the successor state of AP after the Appointed Day without apportioning it between the two states.
He submitted that though the Centre had advised both states to apportion the amount among each other, the AP government had not remitted Rs 1,630 crore which is the share of Telangana State.
He submitted that several issues including the distribution of employees among both states, division of assets and liabilities of various common institutions, establishment of a tribal university and railway coach factory remained unresolved.
