BRS moves privilege motion notice against Bhatti for misleading House on debt

HYDERABAD

The Bharat Rashtra Samithi Legislature Party (BRSLP) has given a notice for moving privilege motion against Deputy Chief Minister M. Bhatti Vikramarka, stating that the government functionary has misled the House and violated the rights of the BRS members and defamed the previous government by giving false information wilfully on the debt passed on to the present government.

In the notice submitted to the Speaker of the Assembly, the BRSLP members pointed out that while presenting a White Paper on the State’s finance in the House on December 20, 2023 as also in his budget speech later on July 25, 2024, Mr. Vikramarka had misled the House and also defamed the previous government with false information. They explained that Mr. Vikramarka had stated in his budget speech that the debt of Telangana was ₹6,71,757 crore. However, in its recent report titled Handbook of Statistics on Indian States 2023-24 the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had made it clear that Telangana had inherited debt of ₹72,658 crore from the previous combined Andhra Pradesh government in 2014-15 and as on March 31, 2024 it had increased to ₹3,89,673 crore.

On the guarantees given by the government, the RBI report had stated that the amount was ₹18,265 crore in 2014-15 and by 2023-24 it had increased to ₹38,867 crore. The BRSLP members stated that the Congress government, that had assumed office on December 7, 2023, had borrowed another ₹15,118 crore till March-end of 2024 but put that debt too in the account of the previous BRS government.

Alleging that the Deputy Chief Minister had violated the privileges of BRS members, they requested the Speaker to allow the notice and discussion on the privilege motion under Rule 168 (1) of the Assembly Rules. In an informal chat in the BRSLP office later, party leader K.T. Rama Rao mentioned that in the past the then Speaker Nandendla Manohar had allowed the privilege motion notice given by BRS (TRS) against the then Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy and allowed a discussion on it.

Published - December 16, 2024 06:16 pm IST