Hyderabad, Mar 21 (PTI) Telangana Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka said on Friday the Congress government introduced a realistic budget for 2025-26, without making false claims "like the previous BRS regime", even while ensuring welfare and development.

Replying to a daylong debate on the budget presented on March 19, Vikramarka, who also holds the finance portfolio, alleged that the BRS government made grand budget announcements during its tenure from 2014-2023 but substantial sums of allocations remained unspent.

"You (BRS) presented budget of Rs 2.90 lakh crore in 2023-24. We increased it by only Rs 1,000 crores and made it Rs 2,91,159 crores for 2024-25. This is an increase of 0.3 per cent from the previous budget. This is realistic budget," he said.

He quoted Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy as having said that the government would not keep people in false notions but ensure implementation of what it promised to do.

Dismissing BRS member T Harish Rao's allegations that GST growth in the state is less than national average, Vikramarka said GST growth rate was 8.4 per cent in 2023-24, the last year BRS of tenure.

The GST growth rate was 12.3 per cent in 10 months (ending January) of 2024-25 which is 3.9 percentage point increase compared to the previous year, he said. The national average was 11.3 per cent, he said.

He said the BRS government spent more than Rs 16 lakh crore in 10 years, but what major projects did it build.

The previous Congress governments had built projects in different sectors like Nagarjuna Sagar irrigation, Hyderabad international airport which are permanent assets to the state, he added.

The Congress government in Telangana on March 19 presented a budget of nearly Rs 3.05 lakh crore for 2025-26, with over Rs 56,000 crore for the implementation of the party's 'six poll guarantees', while expecting to raise Rs 64,000 crore through open market loans. PTI SJR SKY TIR TIR

Budget realism emphasised: restrained fiscal expansion to fund welfare guarantees, financed partly through open market borrowings. The 2025-26 budget is presented as a constrained, implementable fiscal plan that modestly increases spending while prioritising welfare and development, allocating a major package for the party's six election promises and planning significant open market borrowings to finance those commitments; the finance minister also highlighted improved GST growth compared with the prior year and contrasted the current realistic budgeting approach with the previous administration's larger but allegedly unspent announcements.