Telangana Congress has alleged that IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao’s claims on the increase in GSDP and the per capita income of Telangana was based on distorted data and directly related to Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao’s visit to New Delhi.
Former Minister Shabbir Ali, in a statement, said that inflating figures has become a practice for the TRS government to show high revenues. Even the loans and borrowings were shown as State's revenue, and the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) and the 15th Finance Commission have clearly pointed out the serious auditing errors in the budget figures.
He said the TRS government has claimed that Telangana's Per Capita Income has increased from ₹ 1,24,104 in 2014 to ₹ 2,78,833 in 2021 registering a whopping increase by ₹ 154,729 in the last seven years. This is just imaginative, he said, citing various schemes of the government.
In a population of nearly 3.84 crore, nearly 87.57 lakh families or nearly 2.86 crore people are beneficiaries of PDS rice. The income criteria to get a ration card is ₹ 1.5 lakh in rural areas and ₹ 2 lakh in Urban. Therefore, none of these 2.86 crore people have an annual income of ₹ 2,78,833. Further, there are 39,36,521 Aasra pensioners of various categories with each surviving on ₹ 2,000 monthly pension given by the State government. Almost 19-20 lakh qualified youth are registered with the Telangana State Public Service Commission and another 22-25 lakh youth are jobless. Therefore, the pensioners and jobless youth are not earning ₹ 2,78,833 per year.
“If we exclude these three categories of people, then it is impossible for the rest of the adult population to earn so much to take the State's Per Capita Income to ₹ 2,78,333. This clearly means that the PCI figures are exaggerated and false," he argued.
Mr. Shabbir Ali said that the audited revenue receipts of Telangana, including borrowings from 2014-15 to 2019-20 were ₹ 620,501 crore. The latest report of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Telangana says it has an outstanding liability of ₹ 3.12 lakh crore and outstanding guarantees of ₹ 1.05 lakh crore taking the overall debts to ₹ 4.17 lakh crore. “Nearly 20% of Telangana's revenues are being spent on paying interest and repayment,” he said adding how can the income increase when the debts are so huge.
