Grant 20 lakh houses to TG under Central scheme: Ponguleti

Revenue and Housing Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy appealed to the Union Minister for Urban Development and Housing, Manohar Lal Khattar, to give priority to Telangana and allot 20 lakh houses to the state considering its population.
Ponguleti said that in the last 10 years, the construction of houses for the poor has not been done as per the hopes of the people of Telangana. Due to this, there is a huge demand from people for constructing houses. Keeping this in mind, Ponguleti appealed to the Centre to sanction the houses required for Telangana.
The Union Minister for Urban Development, Manohar Lal Khattar, who arrived here on a one-day visit, was welcomed by Ponguleti at the RGI Airport here on Friday.
From there, Khattar and Ponguleti Reddy went to Karimnagar together. Addressing a meeting held after returning to Hyderabad from Karimnagar, Ponguleti raised various issues connected to housing.
”The BRS Government ignored the construction of houses for the poor. It weakened the housing department and redeployed its employees to other departments. In these circumstances, our government, which came to power a year ago, is prioritising the construction of houses for the poor. The target is to build 20 lakh houses in the next four years. For this, the Housing Department has been revived and a necessary system has been set up,” he said.
The Minister said that according to the survey, there are about 44 lakh eligible homeless people in the state. A special mobile app has been developed for the documentation of eligible beneficiaries, geo-tagging and their current residence. With this, a door-to-door survey was conducted. Desk verification was done with a 360-degree tool. Gram Sabhas were held to prepare the final lists, he said.
He said that rapid urbanization is taking place in Telangana and that 6,867 villages of 26 districts have been recently brought under UDA. This should be included in the Union Government portal, he said and added that he had appealed to Khattar regarding this.
He said that according to the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Phase–1, out of the two crore houses sanctioned across the country, only 1.58 lakh houses have been sanctioned for Telangana. This is just 0.79 per cent of the total sanctioned. Telangana has eight per cent of India’s urban population, he said.
“In this context, Telangana is eligible to get another 24 lakh more houses. At least 20 lakh houses should be sanctioned under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Urban Scheme (2.0),” Ponguleti said.