Congress MP and former TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy has accused Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao of transforming Telangana into a bankrupt State while increasing the per capita debt by almost five times.
Addressing a press conference in New Delhi on Monday, Mr. Uttam Kumar Reddy said that Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in a written reply to a question raised in the Lok Sabha on Monday, revealed that some States had by-passed the Net Borrowing Ceiling (NBC) by borrowings loans from certain State Public Sector companies, Special Purpose vehicles (SPVs) and other equivalent instruments, where the principal and/or interest are to be serviced out of the State budgets.
“Telangana State had inherited debts of ₹69,000 crore at the time of its formation in 2014. Those borrowings or outstanding liabilities were accumulated in 60 years. However, the State Government has increased those debts to ₹ 3,12,191 crore in just 7-8 years. As per the RBI report, the total outstanding liabilities of Telangana increased to ₹72,658.10 crore in 2015, ₹90,523.4 cr in 2016; ₹81,820.9 cr in 2017; ₹160,296.3 cr in 2018; ₹190,202.7 cr in 2019; ₹225,418.0 cr in 2020; ₹ 267,530.7 cr in 2021 and to ₹312,191.3 cr in 2022,” he said.
He said that the TRS Government did not utilise the borrowings for productive purposes adding that thousands of crores of rupees borrowed on huge interest and spent on projects which did not give desired results. Quoting an observation from the report of the 15th Finance Commission, he said: “The huge investments made in irrigation have not yet resulted in commensurate returns in terms of crop yield improvements.”
Mr. Uttam Kumar Reddy said the Comptroller General of India (CAG) had pointed out several times that the Telangana Government was showing loans as revenue.
