A big letdown, says Congress

Deputy Congress leader in the Legislative Council Md Ali Shabbir has said the over Rs.1-lakh crore budget presented by the TRS government totally belied the expectations of people who reposed faith in it.

In his over 60-minute speech, Mr. Shabbir put the treasury benches in a spot, leading to frequent interruptions. But backed by the Opposition, he sought to argue how the government failed in preventing farmers’ suicides, ensuring power to the farm sector and poor planning to tide the over energy crisis in the last five months.

Mr. Shabbir Ali, terming the budget ‘hopeless and directionless,’ said it did not give confidence to farmers, SCs, STs and students. While it spoke of ambitious programmes, allocations to various sectors did not even amount to 10 per cent of what was needed. “We want the government to fulfil the promises it made in its election manifesto,” he said.

Alleging that it had woken up to power crunch late, despite the UPA government allocating 54 per cent of power to Telangana on consumption basis, the former Energy Minister recalled how the Congress government had planned and grounded several power projects with foresight in Telangana.

Mr. Shabbir Ali, however, said the Congress would back the resolution for requesting the Centre to ensure Telangana got 54 per cent share in power as per the State Reorganisation Act. Be it SC, ST, BC and minorities welfare, fee reimbursement or schemes like Kalyana Lakshmi, the allocations did not match the tall promises of the TRS government.

Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy, also of the Congress, said the budget was nothing but a jugglery of figures. He was happy that the TRS government had made an allocation of Rs. 100 crore to develop the Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy Temple at Yadagirigutta in Nalgonda district.