All India Majlis-e-Ittheadul Muslimeen floor leader and Chandrayangutta legislator Akbaruddin Owaisi on Wednesday sought an increase in Minorities Welfare 2018-19 budget to ₹4,100 crore, even as he underscored low utilisation of funds in the previous years.
The budget in 2017-18 was ₹1,249.49 crore.
In a letter to Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, Mr. Owaisi sought an increase in allocation for education. He pointed out that the 204 schools under Telangana Minorities Residential Educational Institutions Society (TMREIS) require new buildings. He sought an outlay of ₹1,500 crore for TMREIS and ₹750 crore for various scholarships.
He reiterated that the government had increased the subsidy for bank-linked credit schemes and that as many as 1.4 lakh pending applications needed to be cleared for which he requested ₹1,000 crore.
Mr. Owaisi requested the grant per person under the Shaadi Mubarak Scheme be increased from Rs 75,116 to Rs 1,00,116.
“Overall, the budgetary allocations for minorities welfare have aggregated to ₹4,613.85 crore in four years (2014-15 to 2017-18), but the budgetary releases have amounted to only ₹2,702 crore. The actual expenditure has totalled ₹2,330 crore. By the end of the current financial year, this figure may reach ₹2,500 crore,” he said, urging the government to release pending funds before March 31.
