Telangana Govt waives 3,920-cr housing loans

​Hyderabad: The Telangana government has decided to waive the loans taken by the weaker sections under Indiramma housing scheme to the tune of Rs 3,920 crore.

Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao made this announcement while replying to a short discussion on the two-bedroom housing scheme.

The Indiramma housing scheme, by the erstwhile government, instead of providing shelter to the poor had made them debtors. He said his government has decided to waive of Rs 3920 crore of dues of the beneficiaries.

KCR said the erstwhile government had constructed the houses at a cost of Rs 1 lakh for SCs and Rs 1,05,000 for STs under the scheme with a subsidy component of 28 per cent in rural areas and 90 per cent in urban areas.

This, he said, had pushed the beneficiaries into debts. The banks had started pressurising them and to recover the loan they were subjected to harassment.

The Chief Minister said his government would discuss the issue with the bankers shortly and would see that the beneficiaries get back their land certificates which have been mortgaged with the banks.

Under the double bedroom scheme of his government, KCR said the government will bear 100% expenditure and not a single penny will have to be borne by the poor.

To ensure that the scheme does not slip into the hands of corrupt people and to prevent the danger of public money being misappropriated, the government initiated many reforms.

Without giving scope to corruption stringent rules have been framed. The modalities were formulated in such a way that selection is to be done in transparent way.

Earlier, there used to be different quotas namely, in-charge minister quota, MLA quota and so on. This quota system is now done away.

With this we also have done away with political intervention completely. The local MLA will select the village in his constituency, while the beneficiaries in villages will be decided by the district administration under the chairmanship of the Collector, he added.

The process begins with receiving of applications, their thorough scrutiny followed by a discussion with people in Grama Sabhas for approval of beneficiaries.

If the applications received are more than the houses sanctioned for a village, then a lottery system will be followed.

KCR said he had requested the Collectors to handover the construction of houses to experienced and capable construction engineering sections.

The Collectors had selected the suitable places for two bedroom houses colony and so far they had sanctioned 2,60,000 houses.

The tender process is going on. Tenders were finalized for 14,224 houses. As many as 1217 houses were constructed. People are residing in them. At present, 9588 houses are in construction stage at various places in the state.

Admitting that the contractors were hesitating to file tenders for double bedroom houses, he said the contractors were busy with Mission Kakatiya, Mission Bhagiratha, Irrigation projects, roads construction implemented by government.

They feel that the scope for profit in the construction of double bedroom houses was not enough. Hence they are hesitating a bit, the Chief Minister said.

However, to overcome this, the government has announced that it will supply sand free of cost. Without concern about the market prices, the government has entered into an MOU with 31 companies to give cement at Rs 230 a bag.

This government is fully committed to construct the houses that will showcase the self respect of the people in Telangana, he said.