VISAKHAPATNAM: Overcoming initial hiccups, the sale of applications for the State Government's Rajiv Swagruha, housing scheme for the middle class, picked up momentum on Tuesday.

With applications not reaching from Hyderabad, the district administration got printed 20,000 applications though their dispatch to various eSeva centres where the sale is taking place took some time. By evening more than 3,000 applications were sold taking the total during the last three days to 6,700.

At Sitammadhara for instance, scores of people waited for the applications till late in the morning on Tuesday. For S. Begum, it was a second day of waiting for the application. She had waited till 2 p.m. on Monday and left. She came again on Tuesday morning but till past 11 a.m. the applications were not in sight. Varma, an engineering student from MVP Colony, Sirisha, a State Government employee, and Rajumohan, a worker, were all eagerly awaiting for the forms at the eSeva centre.

"After a wait for all the day, on Monday evening we had received 100 applications which were very meagre when compared to the demand," said an employee of the centre. Finally, after 12 p.m., 500 applications were received on Tuesday. At Jnanapuram too, applications were not received in the morning.

Forms printed

On the last two days, photostat copies of applications forms, around 2,800, were sold. However, following insistence that the number on the sale receipt and application form should match and a printed one, 20,000 applications were got printed at a private press. With each application containing nine sheets, they had to stapled before sending them to the centres, including those on the outskirts. With a vehicle provided by the district administration, the applications were dispatched to eSeva centres. In the Bill Junction centre at Suryabagh where long queues were witnessed, additional printers were brought from the Collectorate for installation.

According to an official overseeing the procedure at Suryabagh, the eSeva centres worked on Tuesday though it was a holiday in view of Ramanavami because of the heavy crowd on the previous two days. "We did not want to disappoint them again," he said. The sale of applications that began on March 25 will continue till April 10. In the backdrop of zooming real estate prices in the private sector, the State Government launched the prestigious scheme to help middle class acquire a roof over their head at a cost about 25 per cent less than the market value. The plinth area for apartment in six municipal corporations and other towns ranges from 388 sq ft to 1,400 sq ft for those with income ranging from Rs.6,000 to Rs.25,000 a month.

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