HYDERABAD: Telengana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has decided to go on a tour starting in June to hand over around one lakh 2BHK houses built by the state government as part of the 'dignity housing scheme' to the underprivileged in various districts. After a nearly three-week stay at his farmhouse in Erravelli on the city outskirts since April 29, the Chief Minister returned to Pragathi Bhavan on Monday.
According to official sources, the Chief Minister convened a review meeting with a few ministers and officials shortly after his return to review pending projects, and the topic of 2BHK dwellings came up for discussion.
In 2016-17, the state government started the dignity housing plan for the underprivileged, spending an average of approximately Rs 8 lakh per house and deciding to build 2,91,057 2BHK houses for the poor across all Assembly constituencies. It has set aside Rs 20,000 crore for this project.
However, the programme was delayed due to various factors, including a lack of funds and contractors unwilling to take on work because the government's rates were "financially unviable" due to increasing cement and sand prices, among others. Later, the government offered them lower-than-market pricing for cement and sand by initiating negotiations with cement companies.
Only about 14,200 2BHK residences could be handed over to recipients in the last five years due to construction delays. Despite the fact that 1.12 lakh residences have been finished to date, they have yet to be handed over to beneficiaries due to a delay in beneficiary selection. While the number of applications received in each seat was in the thousands, the number of residences sanctioned and built was in the hundreds.
Elections to 57 Rajya seat seats on June 10; 2 in Telengana
