Hyderabad : Housing minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy on Thursday said 59,000 hut dwellers would be prioritised for Indiramma houses in the second phase of the scheme.
Responding to questions raised by MLAs Manohar Reddy, Rajagopal Reddy, Medipally Satyam, Akbaruddin Owaisi, Venkatrami Reddy and other members in the assembly, the minister said the state govt would not adopt a policy of shifting poor families 30 to 40 km away from their sources of livelihood. He said Indiramma houses were being sanctioned by treating each assembly constituency as a unit, to provide houses that uphold the dignity of the poor even in areas where an acre of land is valued at ₹150 crore to ₹200 crore. Ponguleti said there was no precedent of any state or the Union govt providing ₹5 lakh in financial assistance free of cost for house construction, while Telangana was extending such support under the Indiramma housing scheme. He noted that several members had suggested that ₹5 lakh was inadequate and said the govt would examine the issue positively. “Approximately ₹22,500 crore will be required for the 4.5 lakh houses sanctioned in the first phase, around ₹11,000 crore for the 2.5 lakh houses in the second phase, and approximately ₹5,500 crore for one lakh houses in urban areas. The govt will have to bear more than ₹40,000 crore for around eight lakh houses under the two phases alone,” he said.
Ponguleti said that around 3,200 houses that had been taken up with govt approval during the first phase but had subsequently stalled due to minor deficiencies in construction had been regularised and cleared. Steps were being taken to ensure that payments to all such beneficiaries were released by the end of this week, he said.
The minister said complete transparency was being maintained in the selection of beneficiaries. Officials were physically verifying every beneficiary selected through the draw by visiting their homes. He made it clear in the assembly that if persons belonging to other constituencies were found to have been selected, their names would be removed from the list.
The minister criticised the previous practice of allocating houses based on political considerations and said the present govt was sanctioning houses solely on the basis of eligibility. He added that steps were being taken to identify govt lands earmarked for the poor during the erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh, as well as lands that had been acquired but not allotted.