Telangana Legislative Assembly The government is ready to discuss the debt raised after the Congress government in the last one year, Bhatt Wickremarka said

File photo of Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Wickremarka. | Photo Courtesy: Nagara Gopal

The state government has expressed its desire to have a debate in the legislative parliament regarding the amount of debt raised after assuming power last November.

Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Wickremarka, who holds the Finance Ministry, asserted that the government is ready to prove the claim that the previous administration under the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) had indiscriminately taken loans and burdened the state exchequer with a debt burden of Rs 7.11 lakh crore. Deputy Chief Minister BRS member T. Harish Rao was responding to allegations that the government was spreading false propaganda against the BRS to cover up its failure.

There was a heated debate in the Legislature-Parliament on Tuesday regarding the amount of loans and guarantees given by the Congress government to government and non-government sector units in the past one year. Answering questions asked during the question and answer session, Bhatti Vikramarka said that the government has guaranteed 51 thousand 277.71 crore rupees till November 30 and 51 thousand 891.44 crore has been withdrawn.

The government had taken an FRBM loan of Rs 52,118 crore from December to the end of November last year and the non-FRBM loan from corporations and special purpose vehicles was Rs 61,991.14 crore. Public sector enterprises raised loans of ₹ 10,099.7 crore during the period without government guarantees.

Mr. Harish Rao pointed out that the government had borrowed ₹ 1.27 lakh crore in the first year itself and if borrowing continued, it would be ₹ 6.3 lakh crore at the end of the five-year tenure. In contrast, the BRS government raised a debt of Rs 4.12 lakh crore in 10 years and this is proved by the data released by the RBI and the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

“Since Mr. Bhatti misled the House by quoting wrong data, we have sent a privilege notice against him,” he said. The Deputy Chief Minister, however, claimed that the government had spent Rs 66,000 crore to pay the principal and interest of the loan taken by the previous government. From a debt service burden of Rs 6,200 crore per annum, the state paid Rs 66,000 crore in a year, reflecting the way the economy was managed during the previous regime.

The Congress government has not crossed the limit set under the FRBM Act for raising loans and the previous government has focused more on paying off outstanding arrears. “The previous government left pending bills of over ₹ 40,000 crore of which ₹ 14,000 crore has been cleared so far,” he said. Similarly, the government has paid the arrears of electricity distribution companies worth 11,000 crore rupees.