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As TRS President K Chandrasekhar Rao gets ready to form his government after a resounding victory in the polls, he needs to allocate over Rs 50,000 crore on the slew of promises out of the several the party made in the run up to elections.
Prominent among them which will put heavy burden on the exchequer include farm loan waiver, doubling of old age pensions to Rs 2,016, increase in pension for the handicapped to Rs 3,016 from Rs 1,500, introduction of unemployment allowance of Rs 3,016 and allocations to double-bedroom houses.
Loan waiver spend
Bulk of the funds would be required for the loan waiver scheme for farmers. Not succumbing to the Mahakutami’s promise of Rs 2-lakh loan waiver, the party stuck to the Rs 1-lakh waiver, a repeat of 2014 poll promise.
The likely outgo would be Rs 25,000 crore on this head alone as against Rs 16,000 crore that the government paid to the banks last time. The government can stagger these payments to banks in phases as it did last time.
“We estimate that the total outstanding farm loans would be in the range of Rs 20,000-25,000 crore in the State,” Ravi Kanneganti of Rythu Joint Action Committee (JAC) has said.
There will be annual recurring additional expenditure on other welfare schemes.
Rythu Bandhu scheme
The government has said that it would increase the Rythu Bandhu assistance to Rs 10,000 from Rs 8,000 an acre a year. This would require Rs 4,000 crore more than the Rs 12,000 crore that it allocated in the first year.
The government spent Rs 3,000 crore to provide Asara (old age) pensions and pensions to the handicapped.
The outgo would go up as the TRS promised to reduce the age by eight years to 57 years to become eligible for the Asara the scheme. The additional money required would depend on the number of people that would come under this bracket.
The outgo on pensions to the handicapped would also go up as the pension amount would be doubled to Rs 3,016.
As it promised to continue the double-bedroom house scheme, the TRS promised to give Rs 5-6.5 lakh each to those who want to build double-bedroom houses on the plots they own.
Besides, it promised to give Rs 3,016 to each of the unemployed youth in the State. It, however, will take sometime to assess the burden as the modalities for the scheme needs to be worked out.
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