Telangana put growth on fast track in 7 years

Despite minor hiccups, state performed well on most metrics

Telangana state has completed seven years of its formation and Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, seven years in power on Wednesday.

Though the state under the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) government made rapid strides in agriculture, irrigation, power, industries sectors, welfare schemes etc in the past seven years, the government is facing a challenge of keeping state finances in order due to the Covid-induced financial crisis in its seventh year.

On the political front, the TRS and Chandrashekar Rao emerged stronger by sweeping Graduate MLC polls, Warangal, Khammam corporation polls and Nagarjunasagar bypoll recently, though they faced minor setbacks in GHMC polls and Dubbak bypoll in 2020-end.

The government is now struggling to fund its welfare schemes and development programmes forcing the state Cabinet to take a decision on May 30 to sell off government lands and housing board houses and flats to raise at least

`30,000 crore this year. Telangana state came into existence on June 2,

2014 as a ‘revenue-surplus state’ giving ample scope for the Chief Minister to spend over `50,000 crore on welfare schemes per year and launch a slew of development projects by spending lakhs of crores of rupees.

In the process, Chandrashekar Rao created a record of making Telangana the only state to provide tap water to every household through Mission Bhagiratha, 24x7 free power supply to farmers, 10,000 per acre per year to 60 lakh farmers totalling to over `14,000 crore per year towards Rythu Bandhu, `5 lakh free insurance for farmers under Rythu Bima, `2,000 crore per year for Aasara pensions, `1 per kg rice, `1 lakh financial assistance to perform marriage of daughters under Kalyana Laxmi and Shaadi Mubarak with an outlay of `2,750 crore, distribution of sheep and the list goes on.

The government could spend nearly `1 lakh crore for Kaleshwaram, the world’s largest lift project in just two years.

In the agriculture sector, Telangana witnessed phenomenal food grains production of over 1 crore metric tonnes and stands second only to Punjab in the country.