Date:06/04/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/04/06/stories/2008040659050700.htm

Andhra Pradesh

Housing aid to SCs, STs

Special Correspondent

State to take up Indiramma houses left incomplete due to the financial constraints of beneficiaries

HYDERABAD: Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy has said that the State government will take up incomplete houses of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes which could not be constructed due to financial constraints of beneficiaries during the first and second phases of Indiramma housing programme in 2006 and 2007 respectively.

Two to three lakh houses in the first phase were abandoned either before construction actually started or at the basement stage. The government proposed to complete such houses by supplementing the unit cost which it financed up to Rs,. 31,000 with bank assistance of Rs. 20,000. The initiative would be taken with the help of contractors and NGOs, Dr. Reddy told a public meeting here to mark the culmination of a bicycle yatra taken up by Mala Mahasabha from Indalvai village in Nizamabad district.

Dr. Reddy said the concession would also be extended to beneficiaries of the second phase programme that was launched last year.

He expressed the government’s resolve to increase four-fold admissions to SC and ST residential schools in July. Against 25,000 students admitted annually to the institutions in the past, the government proposed to enrol one lakh students this year.

The Chief Minister said the government had stepped up welfare programmes for SCs and STs in the last couple of years. The plan expenditure for the programmes was more than the allocation by one per cent as unspent funds in other sectors were transferred to them. The government waived the margin money sanctioned by the SC Corporation up to Rs. 1,500 crore. The mess charges for students in hostels were hiked twice in the last four years, he added. Mallela Venkata Rao, State president of Mala Mahasabha, requested the Government to recognise Dalit Christians as SCs.