Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu will launch housewarmings for the poor during the coming Shravan month. The AP government has set a target for the officials to complete the construction of 3 lakh houses by then. After the formation of the coalition government, it focused on the construction of houses for the poor.
Sand has been made available free of cost. Problems in layouts have also been resolved. In the last 13 months, 2.30 lakh houses have been completed. There are 87,000 houses at the roof level. There are 1.2 lakh houses at the lintel level, and there are about 50,000 houses at the basement level.
The foundations of the rest have not even been laid. The officials have made a plan to complete them too. The central government is providing Rs. 1.50 lakh per house for the construction of houses to the poor. In rural areas, they are being given another Rs. 30,000 under the Employment Guarantee Scheme.
The state government is paying an additional Rs. 1000. Apart from this, SC beneficiaries in urban and rural areas are being provided with additional assistance of Rs. 50,000, BC beneficiaries Rs. 50,000, ST beneficiaries Rs. 75 thousand, and tribals Rs. 1 lakh. Up to Rs. 300 crore has already been sanctioned to about one lakh beneficiaries.
Officials have identified that 50,000 of them have resumed construction of houses. The rest are collecting information from the field level as to why construction has not been taken up despite the additional assistance provided by the state government.
As part of the ‘Houses for All’ program, the coalition government has already issued guidelines on providing land at the rate of 3 cents in rural areas and 2 cents in urban areas.
The order revealed that the state government will issue a conveyance deed for the plots allotted on the basis of ‘Houses for All’. It was clarified that this conveyance deed will provide freehold rights for a period of 10 years.
The procedures have been formulated to provide free house pattas only once in a lifetime. The construction of the house has to be undertaken within two years of the issuance of the house title deed. It has been decided to allocate free house plots only to families below the poverty line (BPL).