Harish Rao accuses Congress government of inflating Telangana debt figures to blame BRS

MEDAK: Former Minister and Siddipet MLA T. Harish Rao lashed out at the Congress government, accusing it of misleading the public by blaming the BRS government for the state's financial situation.

Speaking at a press conference in Medak on Tuesday, Harish Rao criticised the recent statements by Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy and the Congress party, which claimed that the state was drowning in debt under the BRS government. He clarified that a significant portion of the debt was inherited from previous governments.

Referring to a white paper released on December 23, Harish Rao explained that it outlined four types of loans, of which two categories were not the state government’s responsibility to repay. He highlighted that the white paper clearly stated that Rs 59,414 crore of loans had no government guarantees, and Rs 95,462 crore were loans the government was not required to repay. He emphasised that loans not under government obligation totalled Rs 1,54,876 crore.

From the total stated debt of Rs 6,71,757 crore, Rao pointed out that subtracting the Rs 1,54,876 crore of non-obligatory loans left the actual government debt at Rs 5,16,881 crore. Additionally, he noted that Rs 72,658 crore of this debt was inherited from previous governments when Telangana was formed. After adjusting for this inherited debt, the state government's responsibility amounts to Rs 4,44,223 crore.

Harish Rao further explained that Rs 11,609 crore in loans, taken by previous governments through Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) before the formation of Telangana, should also be deducted. This brings the effective debt to Rs 4,32,614 crore.

Harish Rao alleged that Congress had cleverly included Rs 6,115 crore of loans taken by the newly formed Congress government into the BRS government's debt. When this is removed from the total, the actual debt incurred by the BRS government over nine and a half years stands at Rs 4,26,499 crore. He criticised Congress for repeatedly propagating the inflated figure of Rs 6,71,757 crore, calling it misleading.

Of the Rs 4.26 lakh crore in debt, Harish Rao explained that Rs 9,000 crore was allocated to welfare schemes such as the Aasara pension scheme. He also pointed out that due to the central government withholding Finance Commission grants during 2019-20, the state was forced to borrow Rs 2,459 crore. Additionally, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Telangana had to take unavoidable loans totalling Rs 17,558 crore to manage the crisis, as the central government failed to provide adequate grants. He also noted that the state had to borrow an additional Rs 10,784 crore in the 2021-22 fiscal year due to the increase in the debt ceiling by 1% of the GSDP to deal with the pandemic.

Harish Rao said that the Telangana government was forced to borrow Rs 41,159 crore due to the central government's decisions and the impact of the pandemic, stressing that any government would have been compelled to take similar loans under such circumstances.