The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Women seek house sites for poor families

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 28, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Women seek house sites for poor families

Staff Reporter

Survey on socio-economic status of 70,000 applicants suggested

LOOKING FOR ROOF: People staging a dharna in front of the Ministers' Colony in Hyderabad on Monday. Photo: Satish H.

HYDERABAD: Hundreds of women staged a dharna in front of the residences of Ministers in Banjara Hills demanding sanction of house sites for all the poor families having no pucca houses, here on Monday.

The dharna staged as per the call given by the BC Welfare Association also demanded that the Government should not auction Government lands and a survey of socio-economic status should be taken up of 70,000 people who had applied for house pattas so far.

The Association president, R. Krishnaiah, later addressing a meeting said that the Government was not in a position to give at least 60 sq.yards for the poor even 57 years after independence.

Hundreds of poor were migrating to cities in search of work and eking a living through hard labour and taking shelter in roadside huts. The poor had a right on Government lands, he asserted.

Thousands of acres of Government land had already been occupied by the land grabbers with the backing of political leaders. The remaining land would also meet the same fate if it was not distributed to the poor at the earliest, he said. Otherwise the poor would have no other go but put up huts on the Government lands, he warned.

Deploring the Government for sanctioning house sites to ex-MLAs, ministers, IAS officials and political leaders while ignoring the poor, Mr. Krishnaiah alleged that the Rajiv Gruha Kalpa scheme was also being promoted like a real estate venture and the genuine poor were being denied houses.

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