HYDERABAD: Objecting to the statement Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman made on Telangana finances in Rajya Sabha, BRS working president KT Rama Rao said that the 10-year BRS rule has left a revenue surplus state.
In an open letter to the Union minister on Sunday, Rama Rao said that the BRS government helped the people of Telangana overcome their decades of hardship with borrowed money.
“We changed the direction of Telangana’s growth and created inexhaustible assets for the state. Your government wrecked the country with the insurmountable debt in history and you are calling us debt-ridden,” he said in his letter.
The sole purpose of the Union government’s debts was to waive lakhs of crores of loans of the corporate powers, he said.
“People of Telangana will never forgive the BJP for the immense injustice it meted out to Telangana in every single Budget,” Rama Rao said.
“Since Independence, 14 prime ministers incurred a debt of Rs 56 lakh crore in 65 years but the BJP government incurred an insurmountable debt of Rs 125 lakh crore in just 10 years, from 2014 to 2024,” he alleged.
The BRS leader clarified that when Telangana was formed in 2014, the state had about Rs 70,000 crore debt. After 10 years of BRS rule, Telangana was handed over to the Congress as a surplus budget state, he said.
When the BRS government transformed Telangana into a state that provides drinking water to 100 per cent households through Mission Bhagiratha, which was undertaken at its own expense, the Centre was quick to claim credit for it, he alleged.
He said that it was ironic that the Centre was counting 38 lakh tap connections under the Jal Jeevan Mission for which, he said, their contribution was next to zero.
The eight BJP MPs elected from Telangana did not even manage to bring eight paisas for the state from the Centre, he alleged.