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Unapproved houses to cost State exchequer heavily
The state government has decided to accept recommendations of ruling party leaders who brought pressure to give sanction for houses that have already been constructed in rural and urban areas without approval by the government.
Amaravati: The state government has decided to accept recommendations of ruling party leaders who brought pressure to give sanction for houses that have already been constructed in rural and urban areas without approval by the government.
The housing department submitted a report to the government that there are 1.63 lakh houses in the districts that are grounded without prior sanction and Rs 2,520.88 crore needs to be spent if the government accords permission to all those houses recommended by public representatives.
The officials took the issue to the notice of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on the occasion of review on rural housing a couple of days ago. The government, unable to reject the recommendations of its leaders, decided to sanction Rs 95,000 to those houses as against the original unit cost of Rs 1.50 lakh.
According to sources, the housing department has received ‘representations’ from public representatives of the ruling party to accord sanction for the houses constructed without prior sanction. “As the state government has already sanctioned more than 20 lakh houses under various schemes, officials were caught in a dilemma on how to proceed over the issue.
Public representatives have brought pressure on district and state level officials to accord sanction to those houses. As it required huge amount and political issues are involved, we urged the government for necessary directions,” said a senior officer of housing department.
A senior official said the department collected data from all districts. According to the data, the total number of houses is 1,62,785 and of them, 96,610 houses had already been completed. The remaining houses are under various stages. The department also identified that 1,54,875 houses are in rural areas and 7,910 houses in urban areas.
It becomes a problem to the officials to accord sanction to the houses in urban areas as there is no separate state-sponsored scheme for urban housing. “The state government has to bear the total burden of Rs 197.75 crore for the houses in urban areas if it agrees to sanction those houses,” the official said.
The housing department also estimated that Rs 2,323.13 crore is needed for the houses in rural areas, in which Rs 851.81 crore is MGNREGS component. But it is not clear how the MGNREGS component will be paid to those completed houses.
Officials also made it clear that eligibility of the beneficiary and stage of the houses must be verified before giving sanction to those houses. However, minister for housing Kalava Srinivasulu said the government has decided to pay Rs 95,000 to the houses that were built after 2014 even they were not sanctioned by the department.
By K Varaprasada Rao
