Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao criticised that the 2020-21 Budget proposals introduced by the Centre on Saturday are totally disappointing.
He said there is a danger of having funds scarcity for several welfare and development programmes, schemes in the State due to the heavy cuts in the Central funds.
• It was a Constitutional Right of every State to have a share in the Central Taxes. In the 2019-20 financial year, Rs 19,718 Crore was rightful due from the Centre to the Telangana State. In the last Budget the Centre had announced that this amount would be paid to the Telangana State.
• In the 2020-21 Budget proposals, on the funds to be allocated to the Telangana State, there will be a two type’s loss to the State. The second one is in the past Telangana State was given 2.437 per cent of share and this financial year it was reduced to 2.133 per cent. With this, there will be direct decrease of Rs 2,381 Crore of funds from the centre to the State.
This will have an adverse impact on Telangana development plans.
• The Centre which had cut a whopping Rs 3,731 Crore funds from the share it had announced in the Parliament in 2019-20 financial year, is now proposing Rs 16,726 Crore in 2020-21 Financial Year.
•The Centre committing a great fraud and cheating on the GST front. In the GST Act that was brought in 2017, it was clearly states that for the State, which registered less than 14 per cent of growth rate, deficit caused by the GST would be compensated for five years. As per this, the Centre owes a compensation of Rs 1,137 Crore to the State. The Centre has not given any clarity on these compensation funds.
• There is a substantial cut in the Centre’s Budget on the funds to be allocated to the urban development. With this, the Telangana state which is witnessing a fast urbanization would be adversely affected and it would suffer a huge loss.
For the urbanization in Telangana State, in 2019-20 Budget, Rs 1,037 Crore was allocated and it is reduced by Rs 148 Crore in 2020-21 Budget and allocated only Rs 889 Crore. They have cut the Urbanization funds by 14.3 Percent.
• Niti Aayog has recommended to the Centre to allocate Rs 24,000 Crore to the Telangana State for Mission Bhagiratha and Mission Kakatiya programmes. On several occasions, we have requested the Centre to make these allocations. Even then, they did not listen to us. There is no mention of this in this year’s Budget.
