Congress Legislature Party deputy leader K.C. Joseph, MLA, has urged Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to urgently amend the criteria for selecting beneficiaries of the Project Life-Housing Scheme announced by the government to provide homes for the homeless and the landless in the State.
Mr. Joseph, in a press release here on Wednesday, said he had sought in a letter to the Chief Minister an amendment to the criteria for inclusion in the list of beneficiaries of the scheme. There were widespread complaints about the preparation of the list; it was pointed out that while many eligible people had been excluded from the list, several ineligible people were included in it.
The scheme aimed to construct houses for two lakh homeless or landless families in the next five years. The project is implemented by the Department of Local Self-government and the Social Welfare Department.
Mr. Joseph said that government should be prepared to give power to grama sabhas to make corrections and required additions in the list of beneficiaries and to authorise the grama panchayat to prepare the final list of the beneficiaries by considering the proposals of grama sabhas. Many eligible families would be excluded if this method was not adopted, he added.
As of now, only those families having less than 50 cents of land in rural areas would be eligible under the scheme. This should be changed and those who possess one acre or less than one acre of land should also be made eligible, Mr. Joseph said.
The beneficiary list should be discussed in grama sabhas for correction and addition. He also said the criteria set by the previous United Progressive Alliance government for the Indira Awas Yojana should be adopted for the Project Life-Housing Scheme.
