Ramu (name changed to protect privacy), 35, applied for the Telangana government’s much-publicised double bedroom housing scheme in 2021.
A daily wage worker at Doranna Colony in Khammam town, and a father of two, he had lost hope of getting the apartment. But, this year, when the State’s Gruha Lakshmi scheme kicked off, he signed up in his wife’s name on August 10. The family saw a glimmer of hope to have a house of their own.
The Gruha Lakshmi scheme is offered to women whose families are below the poverty line and who own a housing site. They are given ₹3 lakh in three stages to aid in construction.
Ramu is among dozens of people from the most marginalised sections of society who have applied. In his Doranna Colony, mostly inhabited by labourers and unskilled workers living in cramped rented rooms or in asbestos-roofed kuchha houses, people are looking forward to own a house that does not leak in the monsoon or get so hot in summer that it’s impossible to stay indoors.
The double bedroom scheme, which is free of cost, had about 20,000 applicants in Khammam, as against 1,248 constructed flats. Almost 200 are currently under construction, but the number falls seriously short of the requirement.
With the Gruha Lakshmi scheme, the 72-hour window for submitting applications between August 8-10 across Telangana witnessed a stampede-like situation.
Compelled to live alone
Laxmi, an Adivasi widow of Shilpi Nagar in Bhadrachalam, about 120 km from Khammam, who works as a sweeper in a local hotel, has been waiting for allotment of a 2-BHK house for months. Her name figured in the list containing 150 names approved by the officials of the District Collectorate, but she was not allotted the house, she says. She laments that she is compelled to live alone in a rented room for the past several years.
“Whenever I approached the officials concerned, I received a rhetorical reply that as many as 117 units had been constructed under the scheme and kept ready for allotment any time,” she says. As a result, many homeless people residing in rented rooms in the flood-prone area in the temple town applied for Gruha Lakshmi, with their hopes of double bedroom houses fast fading.
Srinivas (name changed) stares at the bundles of applications lying on the floor. With agony written large on his face, he waits for his turn in the long queue at the Sangareddy Mandal Revenue Office (MRO), 65 km from Hyderabad, to submit his documents. The officials nonchalantly accept them, but dump them in a drum near their chairs before calling the next person. They may be “just papers” for these officials, but are long- cherished dreams for people like Srinivas.
K. Narsinga Rao (name changed) from Mardi village of Kalher mandal under the Narayankhed constituency is trying hard to catch the attention of an official. With his mother Laxmi accompanying him, Rao is unsure of his form being picked up from among the thousands of applications already submitted and pushed into a huge box lying there. After handing over the application and seeing it dumped into the box, all that he can now do is pray to God that his mother is lucky.
Overwhelming response
The Gruha Lakshmi scheme has received such an overwhelming response that at some places, officials were forced to arrange for drums to store the applications for sorting later. Initially, people were confused about what documents to attach along with the applications. But, in many places, officials advised them to submit the applications with whatever documents they had, as they could submit the remaining documents at the time of field inspection.
However, for many, getting caste and income certificates at the last minute was a problem (Income certificates, Aadhaar cards, and passbooks of the site are required). Meanwhile, technical problems like slow issue of certificates by servers unable to take the load raised the anxiety level of applicants. Then, there’s the confusion that comes with any new scheme.
“We have submitted our application in the name of my mother, Lakshmi, at Kalher mandal headquarters. We have about 150 square yards for house construction. But, people are saying that the priority in allotment will be given to BRS activists. More than 100 families from our village submitted applications. Now, we don’t know who will get the sanction,” said K. Narsinga Rao.
“The government should have given more time for the public to submit their applications and created an awareness about the scheme,” CPI(M) district secretary, Sangareddy, G. Jayaraj said.
According to sources, about 82,000 applications were received in three days in erstwhile Medak district. Officials received 46,000 applications in Sangareddy district, followed by 26,000 applications in Siddipet district and 10,000 in Medak district. About 4,000 applications were submitted at Mogudampalli village alone. In many places, applicants did not receive any acknowledgement note.
Allaying fears
Roads and Buildings Minister V. Prashanth Reddy tried to allay the apprehensions among people by claiming that Gruha Lakshmi is a continuous scheme and there is no deadline for it. “In the first phase, we are sanctioning 3,000 units in every constituency. Once completed, the second phase will start,” he said.
“I could not apply for Gruha Lakshmi, despite having an open plot at Chelgal village, due to the short duration of three days given for submission of applications in the first phase,” rued a farmer from Chelgal, who was away on a health emergency. He pointed out that there is a nearly two-week window to receive applications for retail liquor shop auction for 2023-2025 licence period.
Heavy burden
The Gruha Lakshmi scheme is set to impose a heavy burden on Telangana’s Finance department. A brainchild of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, it involves sanctioning 3,000 houses in each Assembly constituency during the first phase at an estimated cost of ₹7,350 crore — ₹3,900 crore in rural areas and ₹3,450 crore in urban areas — with financial assistance of ₹3 lakh each to the selected beneficiaries. Payments would be made in three stages of ₹1 lakh each – basement level, roof laying stage, and completion stage.
The scheme figured in the BRS (then TRS) manifesto of 2018. “While continuing the construction of 2-BHK houses as per existing norms, those who have their own plot and plan to build a house on their own will be provided financial assistance ranging from ₹5 to ₹6 lakh,” the manifesto had said.
Scaling down the quantum promised in the manifesto, the government issued detailed guidelines according to which 4 lakh houses had been sanctioned for the current year.
The government has made a budgetary provision of ₹12,000 crore under the scheme for the current year under the ‘weaker section housing programme’. Out of this, it had allocated ₹7,350 crore for the scheme under Beneficiary-Led Participation (Beneficiary-Led Construction – BLC).
Notwithstanding the announcement that the scheme is a continuous programme, many applicants expressed scepticism over the speedy implementation, with the Assembly elections round the corner. The scepticism arises from the fact that it is not possible to construct a two-room house with RCC frame structure along with a toilet, as envisaged by the Gruha Lakshmi scheme with the ₹3 lakh financial assistance, given the high cost of construction materials and labour charges, contended an applicant from Subash Nagar in Karimnagar town.
People want the amount to be increased to at least ₹5 lakh and one-time payment, instead of the stipulated three stages, to facilitate construction of houses in a hassle-free manner, he contended.
Field inspections
Bhadrachalam Tahsildar Srinivas told The Hindu that field inspections are under way to expeditiously scrutinise the 924 applications received under the first phase in Bhadrachalam and the report will be submitted to the district authorities by August 18.
The guidelines issued by the government say that applicants, who could not be accommodated in the first phase, would be under the Permanent Waiting List (PWL) for that village/ward and would be considered in future. The government had, however, kept a safe harbour in the implementation of the scheme authorising the managing director of the Telangana State Housing Corporation Limited to “explore the possibility of dove-tailing the Gruha Lakshmi scheme with the Government of India housing schemes”.
The announcement of Gruha Lakshmi scheme came at a time when the Chief Minister announced a spree of sops for different communities like financial assistance of ₹1 lakh each to eligible people from Backward Classes and minorities, as a one-time grant on the lines of Dalit Bandhu and loan waiver of up to ₹1 lakh for eligible farmers, involving an outgo of around ₹19,000 crore.
The government is already facing severe constraints in terms of finances, as the revenue receipts did not meet the expectations. The State’s total revenue receipts at the end of April-June 2023 quarter stood at ₹35,024 crore, just 16.17% of budget estimates of ₹2.16 lakh crore. Of these, tax revenues at the end of June were pegged at ₹31,725 crore, 20.8% of the projected ₹1.52 lakh crore.
Given the restrictions imposed by the Union Finance Ministry on the State’s borrowings and reduced scope of levying new taxes on people, as the State has entered the election year, it will be a herculean task for the government to raise the resources required to meet its target.
