The maiden Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman left the Telangana State disappointed.
“It is an insipid budget which has neither good schemes nor programmes to enthuse the States. It has nothing for Telangana-specific projects such as Kaleshwaram and Mission Bhagiratha,” said official sources.
The Telangana government has been requesting time and again to allocate funds for the two projects, which was also recommended by NITI Aayog, they said. The total transfers to the States, including tax devolution, were budgeted at ₹13.19 lakh crore in 2019-20 compared to the revised estimates of ₹12.38 lakh crore last year, an increase of just 6.5%.
Within the total transfers, the transfers under the Centrally-sponsored schemes to the States were ₹3.32 lakh crore as against ₹3.05 lakh crore of revised estimates of 2018-19, with a marginal increase of 8.8%, they pointed out. The estimated tax devolution to Telangana in 2019-20 is ₹19,719 crore as compared to the revised estimates of ₹18,561 crore in 2018-19. There was only a marginal increase of ₹1,157 crore in tax devolution, which was even lower than the amount provisioned in the interim budget by ₹864 crore.