Telangana clears construction of 2 lakh 2BHK houses

Hyderabad: The state government on Wednesday issued orders for construction of 2 lakh 2BHK houses for the poor in the state, barring GHMC limits, in the ongoing financial year 2016-17. The unit cost in rural areas has been fixed at Rs 5.04 lakh and urban areas at Rs 5.30 lakh.

The government had already approved construction of 60,000 2BHK houses in GHMC limits in 2015-16 just before GHMC elections, where the unit cost was fixed at Rs 7 lakh. However, tenders are yet to be finalised due to poor response from contractors, who are seeking higher unit cost.

An additional Rs 1.25 lakh per unit will be sanctioned for creating infrastructure facilities in rural areas and Rs 75,000 in urban areas. The responsibility of implementing the 2BHK housing scheme has been entrusted to district collectors in the districts and the GHMC commissioner in GHMC limits.

A project monitoring unit has been constituted by the housing department which will monitor the allocation of funds for the scheme. Since the government had not allocated any fund for 2BHK housing scheme in the 2016-17 Budget, the entire funds required for the scheme would be mobilised through various funding agencies.

Housing minister A. Indrakaran Reddy said, “The government will ensure that there is no dearth of funds. We have already approached several national and international funding agencies and construction companies, which are keen to partner with the government. We are going to create a record by constructing 2.60 lakh 2BHKs in a year, which no government had dared to do in the country so far.”

Mr Reddy said each 2BHK is equal to seven Indiramma houses constructed by earlier Congress governments and those criticising TRS government for the delay in constructing 2BHK houses should realise the sincerity and commitment of the government towards the poor to provide them their dream houses for free though it imposes a huge financial burden on the government.