Telangana govt to collect Rs. 80,000 for free-of-cost houses

January 05, 2015 05:03 pm | Updated November 16, 2021 07:04 pm IST - HYDERABAD

The Telangana government on Monday indicated that its low cost housing scheme for the poor will come with a burden of Rs. 70,000 to 80,000 a unit for the beneficiaries. The burden would be reduced to Rs. 40,000 to 50,000 if the beneficiaries undertook masonry on their own.

The free-of-cost 2 BHK houses, an election promise of ruling TRS, will cost Rs. 4.61 lakh a unit with a plinth area of 490 sq ft but the government proposed to meet only Rs 3.5 lakh a unit as per its election manifesto. The cost per house will go up by another Rs one lakh for providing amenities such as roads, power, drinking water and drains. However, the government will meet the expenditure of amenities from other heads of account, the Housing and Endowments Minister A. Indrakaran Reddy told a press conference at the Secretariat after a review of the housing programmes with officials.

He said the facts would be taken to the notice of the Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to take a final decision.

Asked why the government scaled down the plinth area from its promised 550 sq ft, Mr. Reddy said the unit cost would go up to Rs. 4.86 lakh if the houses were to be that big. To reduce the burden on beneficiaries, the size was brought down.

He added that Monday’s official meeting reviewed the housing programmes by consecutive governments from 1985 to 2013-14 and found that 8 to 10 lakh out of 42 lakh units constructed were not in proper condition. Therefore, the government decided to acquire one or two acres in each village for construction of new houses. About 20 houses could be constructed in one acre by allotting 160 yards for each block. The government did not expect the demand to exceed 40 houses in each village which may require two acres of land.

On the Rajiv Swagruha housing programme for poor under the previous Congress government, the Minister said the Chief Minister will take a view on the poor occupancy in these houses. Pending a decision on these houses, the government decided to roll out its programme from next month by constructing 10 lakh houses over the next five years.

He also said the intensive household survey taken up by the government did not yield proper results on the requirement for low cost housing but it was estimated that the demand could be around 22 lakh units. However, it could come down to 14 to 15 lakh if a proper survey was done at the field level.

Separately, the Crime Investigation Department of police was already carrying out its own enquiry into irregularities in housing in previous regimes. The teams conducted random enquiry in one village a mandal, he added.

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