The government of Telangana has hiked allocations for agriculture and allied sector and some other key departments in the state Budget 2023-24 presented on Monday.
The election year Budget, pegged at Rs 2.90 lakh crore, has no new schemes but the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) increased allocations for some of its flagship schemes.
The Budget outlay has been increased by about 13 per cent over 2022-23.
The size of last year’s Budget was Rs 2.56 lakh crore.
Presenting his fourth Budget and the last of the BRS government in its present term, state Finance Minister T. Harish Rao announced Rs 1,000 crore for new recruitments in government departments and Rs.500 crore for providing Infrastructure facilities to all universities.
He proposed Rs 26,831 crore for agriculture and allied departments, which along with irrigation remained priorities of the government.
For farmers’ debt waiver, the government has allocated Rs 6,385 crore, an increase of Rs 2,385 crore over last year
For Rythu Bandhu, the flagship scheme to provide investment support to farmers at the rate of Rs.10,000 per acre annually, the allocation has been increased marginally to Rs 15,075 crore. The allocation for insurance to farmers has been revised from Rs 1,465 crore to Rs 1,589 crore.
Harish Rao proposed Rs 26,885 crore for the irrigation sector and reiterated the government’s commitment to bring an additional 50,24,000 acres under irrigation in the next two to three years to take the total area to 1 crore 25 lakh acres.
Stating that Telangana is the only state in the country providing uninterrupted 24-hour quality power supply to all the sectors of the economy and free power to the agriculture sector, he enhanced allocation for power subsidy to Rs 12,000 crore from Rs 10,500 crore in 2022-23.
Under Aasara pensions, provided to various categories of beneficiaries, the allocation has been enhanced by Rs 271 crore to Rs 12,000 crore for 2023-24.
Under the flagship scheme Dalit Bandhu, the Minister proposed Rs 17,700 crore. During the years, 1,100 Dalit families in each of the 118 Assembly constituencies will be provided Rs 10 lakh each.
The allocation for the education department is pegged at Rs 19,093 crore. For the medical and health department, he proposed Rs 12,161 crore.
The state Finance Minister proposed Rs.2,500 crore for maintenance of R&B roads and s.2,000 crore for maintenance of Panchayat Raj roads
He also announced the contract employees will be regularized and the pay scales of employees of SERP will be revised from April, 2023.
