VIJAYAWADA: Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has directed officials to consider the option of auctioning endowment lands in the state so that the government could acquire them for constructing houses for the poor.
The CM saw non-availability of land as a major stumbling block for the flagship programme under which the government embarked on construction of about 19 lakh houses in both rural and urban areas. It is hard pressed to identify land for 20 lakh more housing units for the shelterless families.
During the Collectors’ Conference on Wednesday, Naidu asked Revenue (Endowments) department Special Chief Secretary Manmohan Singh to consider the possibility of auctioning endowment lands. “The government too will participate in the auction and make the necessary payment to the department to acquire lands for housing projects,” he said.
When Singh pointed out that any decision related to the endowments department should be taken in the interest of the institution, the Chief Minister said auctioning of lands would be a favourable development for the department as it became a herculean task to protect the temple lands from encroachments.
It is learnt that the endowments department owns lakhs of acres of land in 13 districts of the state. In Guntur district alone, it has about 45,000 acres.
Similarly, when the Chief Minister favoured the option of exempting registration fee for those owning ‘unobjectionable’ private lands up to 100 yards for several years so that they could build houses, and to include the same in the agenda for the next Cabinet for its consideration, Commercial, Registration and Excise department Special Chief Secretary D Sambasiva Rao was of the view that though it was not a big issue to bring the matter to the notice of the Cabinet, there was a need to consider whether the issue was of any significance or not. However, the Chief Minister observed that despite some people owning ‘unobjectionable’ lands for several years, they were not able to construct houses due to lack of registration certificate.
“If we give them an exemption, they will be able to benefit from the housing scheme,” the Chief Minister said.