Telangana notifies EC of two Assembly vacancies

The Telangana government has notified the Election Commission of two vacancies in the Assembly after expelling two Congress legislators — Komatireddy Venkat Reddy (Nalgonda) and Sampath Kumar (Alampur) — from the House.

The House terminated the membership of the two members after Legislative Council Chairman Swamy Goud was hurt when Reddy hurled his headphones as Congress members protested against Governor ESL Narasimhan’s speech on Monday. Eleven other Congress members were suspended for the rest of the Budget session.

The government acted swiftly on Wednesday and issued a Gazette notification on the two vacancies arising out of terminating the membership of the two members, and defended its action. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao said the government was considering expelling two more members.

Replying to the Opposition’s allegations in the Assembly on Wednesday that the government had borrowed heavily after it assumed power in 2014, Rao said the State had inherited a loan burden of ₹72,000 crore after the bifurcation. “It now stands at ₹1.42 lakh crore. It is wrong to say that the loan burden crossed over ₹2 lakh crore,.

“The government can’t take loans indiscriminately. There are rules that govern the extent of loans that we can take,” he said.

Listing various welfare and developmental schemes, he said the installed power capacity of the State has increased to 15,344MW now from 7,784 MW in 2014.

“We are confident of achieving a capacity of 28,000 MW in the next two years. This will include 1,600 MW from NTPC,” he said.

Budget

Telangana Finance Minister Etela Rajender will present the State Budget for 2018-19 on Thursday. He is expected to continue the government’s focus on allocations to the irrigation sector.

He will also allocate funds to the financial assistance scheme being rolled out for farmers. The government had announced that farmers will get ₹4,000 for every cultivated acre suring kharif and rabi seasons.