The 15th Finance Commission has recommended a grant of ₹2,350 crore for operation and maintenance of Mission Bhagiratha, the flagship programme of the State government to provide safe drinking water to all households across the State.
The commission said in its report that the State government had sought grants for operation and maintenance of Mission Bhagiratha to provide safe, adequate and treated drinking water to people. The project would cover a geographical area of more than one lakh sq. km and 10% of water supply was earmarked for the industrial sector also.
Duct laid
The State government had informed that the Mission would provide piped drinking water to every household. Along with the pipelines laid for water supply, optical fibre cable duct has also been laid to provide broadband services to each household under the Digital Telangana programme.
“We propose an amount of ₹2,350 crore for this purpose,” the commission said. The 15th Finance Commission is the second national level body after the NITI Ayog to recommend assistance to Mission Bhagiratha.
The NITI Ayog has recommended assistance of ₹19,205 crore for Mission Bhagiratha in view of the larger public interest the project envisaged to serve, but the recommendation had not translated into action so far.
The finance panel, however, lamented that the State resorted to borrowing for critical social infrastructure like drinking water and irrigation. “The mounting interest payments for such huge off-budget borrowings (without provision for cost recovery) is expected to create fiscal challenges soon,” the commission said.
The report said the current level of loan debt repayments is also cause of worry.
Interest repayment at 13% of the total revenue expenditure in 2018-19 is higher than class average (comprising similar States like Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Karnataka) and this is growing fast, the Finance Commission noted.
