TDP Polit Bureau member and Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council Yanamala Ramakrishnudu on Sunday disputed the government’s claims on the expenditure incurred on measures initiated to contain the spread of coronavirus.
In a statement, Mr. Ramakrishnudu alleged that the government was fudging statistics with a view to hushing up its failures during the last fiscal. It was a blatant lie to say that the State suffered a loss of over ₹13,000 crore due to the pandemic, he observed.
“The impact of lockdown will be felt in the current fiscal. In the 2019-20 financial year, its severity will be for a mere nine days. The total loss of revenue due to the Janata Curfew and lockdown in the last nine days of the previous fiscal will be ₹1,440 crore going by the claims made by the ruling party that the loss per day is ₹160 crore,” Mr. Ramakrishnudu said.
‘Excise income up’
The excise income was ₹6,536 crore during 2019-20 against ₹6,220 crore in 2018-19. Government records showed that liquor sales had gone up by ₹336 crore. Also, the Centre had released ₹1,300 crore towards 14th Finance Commission dues. This apart, ₹1,400 crore was released under MGNREGS, he said.
“Further, the government is yet to tell what it has been doing with the funds saved by discontinuing Anna Canteens, unemployment allowance, festival gifts and other programmes of the TDP government. The State government is misusing these funds,” Mr. Ramakrishnudu alleged.
To say that ₹4,000 crore was spent on COVID-19 containment measures was another lie, he said, and added that South Korea had spent much less (₹870 crore in terms of our currency) despite conducting over four lakh tests.
“The State government claims to have incurred ₹4,000 crore though only 20,000 tests have been conducted so far,” he pointed out.
Mr. Ramakrishnudu said that the government seemed to be bracing for slashing expenditure on developmental works citing the deepening financial crisis.