For young mother Mary, balancing her six-month-old baby, struggling with a smoke-emanating choolah, and cooking food is a difficult task. Living in a make-shift tent she hopes desperately that her problems will be solved once she gets a housing unit allotted under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).
If she really gets one, it will make a vast difference to her life. Right now she lives near a cesspool amid pulled down houses with her mother, brother and husband, a painting worker.
She shares the plight with 35 other families living in similar conditions. According to Sevanagar SC Service Society president Akula Jojibabu and Association for Regional Tribal Development (Urban) wing secretary Pragada Srinivas, a total of 668 families were shifted from Sevanagar and Omkarnagar to Kommadi and Madhurwada in December 2011 but 36 were left out.
They contend that as per the September 2011 High Court order, the GVMC should verify the list of beneficiaries, exclude the ineligible and include the eligible for housing. The families living there for decades were vacated after the Railways insisted that the site was required for expansion work.
The transformer and street-lighting provided at a cost of Rs.6.5 lakh with the MPLAD funds of Union Minister for HRD D. Purandeswari and Visakhapatnam North MLA Tyanala Vijay Kumar have been disconnected and there is no water supply, says Jojibabu.
“I have been living here since my father’s time and six months ago my house was demolished. The GVMC officials have been promising houses for six months now but nothing has materialised so far,” complains Akula Prasad.
Eligibility doubtful
However, GVMC officials dispute the version of benami housing coming in the way of allotting houses to those left out. “The GVMC has to get a list of the eligible certified from the Estate Wing of the Railways on the basis of which housing will be allotted.
Recently, they have sent a list of 27 families. But barring a few, allotment has already been made to the family members of those demanding houses now,” says GVMC Urban Community Development Project Director M.N.A. Patrudu. Now the list sent by the Railways will be verified for eligibility and a final decision will be taken by the Commissioner.
