VIJAYAWADA: BJP floor leader in the State Assembly P Vishnu Kumar Raju and Adoni MLA PV Parthasarathi called on Twenty Point Programme Chairman Lanka Dinakar at his office in the State Secretariat, and urged him to take the irregularities that occurred in TIDCO houses during previous YSRC regime, which diluted the spirit of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, to the notice of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu to initiate action.
As part of poverty alleviation, houses should be provided to the poor under PM Awas Yojana. The then TDP government invited tenders for the construction of 4.55 lakh TIDCO houses in 2015-16, and construction of 3.13 lakh units was taken up. During the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy government, 57,000 houses were only built. As many as 1.67 lakh houses have become unusable due to negligence in provision of basic infrastructure, the BJP floor leader informed.
According to the information submitted by Vishnu Kumar Raju to Dinakar, the YSRC government issued house documents to the beneficiaries of the PM Awas Yojana with Jagan photo, obtained loans in the name of beneficiaries from banks, and diverted the funds without constructing the houses. Now, the beneficiaries are getting bank notices seeking payment of dues.
As many as 43 contractors had committed suicide due to non-payment of bills for the houses constructed by them under the PM Awas Yojana. Though the construction of houses began before 2019, they have not been completed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the steep rise in the prices of iron and other building materials, escalating the project cost. Large scale corruption had also hit the implementation of the Awas Yojana, the BJP floor leader explained.
Dinakar revealed that the process of collecting factual information pertaining to TIDCO houses from the authorities is in progress, and after completing the process, a report will be submitted to the Chief Minister and Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development P Narayana to ensure justice to the beneficiaries of the housing scheme.