HYDERABAD: Revenue and Housing Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy on Friday announced that the state government will soon come out with a new Urban Housing Policy aimed at enabling ‘affordable housing’ for middle-class families in all four corners of the city near the Outer Ring Road (ORR).
Speaking to reporters at his chamber in Dr BR Ambedkar Secretariat, the minister said four locations around the ORR have been identified, with proposals to construct 8,000 to 10,000 houses at each site.
He said that a vision document would be unveiled during the upcoming Telangana Rising Summit on the project to be taken up on a no-profit, no-loss basis.
Stating that the government is also examining proposals to redevelop dilapidated structures earlier built under the Kukatpally Housing Board limits, the minister said that they will replace these buildings with high-rise apartment complexes.
He said that the present government had completed the long-pending 2BHK housing works with an expenditure of Rs 700 crore and created basic infrastructure in those colonies at a cost of Rs 200 crore.
Under the ongoing Indiramma Housing Scheme, Srinivas Reddy said that around four lakh houses have been sanctioned so far and three lakh are in varying stages of construction.
He announced that one lakh houses will be ready for occupation by March next year, followed by another two lakh by June.
The minister said that the government had already reclaimed nearly 1,000 acres of Housing Board land by removing encroachments and securing them with compound walls. The Housing department, which he alleged had been effectively dismantled by the previous government, has now been revived with the objective of constructing permanent houses for the poor.
Hitting out at BRS working president KT Rama Rao for levelling land scam allegations over the implementation of the Hyderabad Industrial Land Transformation Policy (HILT-P), the revenue minister asserted that key features of the policy originated during the previous BRS regime itself.
The minister said that two components now being objected to under the HILTP framework were, in fact, approved when KTR had signed the corresponding files as minister for municipal administration.