Huge demand for house sites in Srikakulam

Srikakulam: There has been a huge demand to get house sites under government scheme in the district. In the wake of assurances made by Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy to provide house sites for 25 lakh families by Ugadi festival next year, majority of the families have applied for house sites in Srikakulam district. In total, 8.31 lakh families have applied for house sites across the district.

After due verification, officials prepared a preliminary list with 93,000 eligible families and rejected 7.38 lakh applications. Persons who had houses or house sites from the government earlier, have again applied for house site.

There are 1,131 revenue villages in 38 mandals in the district. No government lands are available in 700 villages. In the remaining 431 villages, 1,011 acres of government lands were identified by the revenue officials in both urban and rural areas.

But these lands are not sufficient for house sites to cover the eligible families. As per government guidelines, one acre of land can be given to 40 families and at this rate, 1,011 acres of land can be given to 40,440 families. The remaining 52,560 families have to wait for some more time for sites.

"After due verification of applications, we have identified 93,000 applicants are eligible and 7.38 lakh are not eligible, " Joint Collector K Srinivasulu told The Hans India. "We are going to conduct re-verification of lands in all 700 villages where government lands were not identified so far," he added.