Hyderabad: The Telangana state government spends Rs 30,000 crore a year on welfare schemes. There is a wastage of over 25 per cent due to faulty delivery mechanism with ineligible persons claiming the benefits of welfare schemes and PDS stocks being diverted to open market.
The government feels that it can credit up to Rs 5,000 per month per BPL household if Centre launches UBI by replacing welfare schemes. The TS government has raised annual income limit to determine BPL households. It increased the income limit from Rs 60,000 to Rs 1.50 lakh in rural areas and from Rs 75,000 to Rs 2 lakh in urban areas.
With this, the number of BPL households in Telangana state has nearly doubled.
As per the statistics available with government, the state had 85.51 lakh households in the BPL category covering 2.74 crore people.
The TS population as per the Census 2011 is 3.51 crore. If Rs 5,000 is credited per year to 85 lakh households, it amounts to nearly Rs 4,275 crore per month and Rs 51,300 crore per year.
The government is of the opinion that barring food subsidy, which is essential for all households, the other schemes like fee reimbursement, scholarships, Aarogyasri, Kalyana Lakshmi and Shaadi Mubarak are case-specific. Due to this, the expenditure would come down by more than half to between Rs 20,000 crore to Rs 25,000 crore, while the government is spending over Rs 30,000 crore.
The other benefit expected is a drastic cut-down in supporting staff and operational costs for implementing welfare schemes which comes around to over Rs 2,000 crore per year.
