Hyderabad: Commenting on the 2024-25 Telangana state budget for minorities, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader Shaik Abdullah Sohail slammed the Congress government for failing to allocate Rs 4,000 crore budget as promised in its six guarantees.
He said that the minorities will be provided a bare 0.82% raise. “The budget is Rs 2.75 lakh crore. In this, the Congress government decided to provide Rs 2,262 crore for the minorities, which is a mere 0.82% push of the total budget. Moreover, this government is allocating only Rs 62 crore more than the previous BRS government’s budget of 2023-24,” he said.
He said that though the state government has allocated Rs 1,000 crore and Rs 250 crore for the construction of SC and ST schools respectively, no such allocation was made for minorities.
“The Congress government has stated that they will strengthen the already existing residential minorities schools but failed to make any allocations,” he said.
He further said that in the 40-page speech by the finance minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, the word ‘minority’ appeared five times, “with no specific reference to any scheme”.
Congress falls short of poll promise
The Congress government failed to meet its poll promise of allocating a budget of Rs 4000 crore towards Telangana minorities’ welfare while presenting the 2024-25 state budget on Saturday.
Further, the amount is marginally higher than Rs 2,200.34 crore allocated to minority welfare in 2023-24 by the former BRS government.
Minorities, who make up 14.24% of the total population in Telangana, were allocated the following amounts towards welfare in the respective fiscal years: Rs. 1,030 crore in 2014-15, Rs. 1,130 crore in 2015-16, Rs. 1,204 crore in 2016-17, Rs. 1,249.49 crore in 2017-18, Rs. 2,000 crore in 2018-19, Rs. 1,369.95 crore in 2019-20, Rs. 1,518.05 crore in 2020-21, Rs. 1,728.71 crore in 2022-23, and Rs. 2,200.34 crore in 2023-24.
