Telangana Budget: Education gets Rs 19,000 crore, Rs 500 crore for varsities

The Telangana government on Monday, February 6, allocated Rs 500 crore for providing basic amenities in the universities across the state, including modernisation of hostels and construction of new buildings.

While presenting the budget, Finance Minister T Harish Rao said this is the first time in the history of the state that such a big allocation has been made for such works, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express. In total, the state has allocated Rs 19,093 crore for education; Rs 16,092 for secondary education and Rs 3,001 crore for the higher education department.

Approximately 6.57% of the total budget has been earmarked for the education department, an increase of 6.24% from last financial year.

Technical education
Giving importance to technical education this year, the finance minister announced that from the 2023-24 academic year, polytechnic colleges will be established at Maheshwaram in Rangareddy district and at Manuguru in Bhadradri-Kothagudem district.

“In the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University jurisdiction, four new engineering colleges are being established. Among these, colleges at Sircilla and Wanaparthy have already started functioning while the institutes at Mahbubnagar and Kothagudem will start functioning shortly,” he said.

Residential schools
Notably, Rs 100 crore each has been allotted to the Telangana Mahila University and Forest College this year. The minister has also accorded priority to the development of residential schools. He reiterated that at the time of the formation of the state, there were only 293 residential institutions with sub-par facilities while the student strength was 1.31 lakh. Today, the number stands at 1,002 institutions imparting education to 5.59 lakh students, he added.

In the year 2022-23, the allocation for residential institutions has been increased to Rs 3,400 crore, he said. An amount of Rs 7,289 crore has been allocated for providing basic amenities in 26,065 schools across the state under three phases of the Mana Ooru Mana Badi scheme, Harish said. In the first phase, basic amenities are being provided in 9,123 schools at a cost of Rs 3,497 crore, he added.