The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Government to give priority to housing

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 03, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Government to give priority to housing

Special Correspondent

Documents of houses on revenue land distributed
BDA, HUDCO urged to focus on housing for the poor

BANGALORE: Every poor family in the State should have a house of its own and bureaucrats should help them with paperwork and in getting funds from the Government, Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy has said.

He was participating in a function organised by the Revenue Department to distribute records of houses built for the poor on revenue land here on Tuesday.

Mr. Kumaraswamy said at a time when political parties were going all out to help big land developers and builders, poor people who did not have a roof over their heads were made to run from pillar to post. The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO) and other such organisations should concentrate on housing programmes for the poor.

Mr. Kumaraswamy said the State Government had recovered over 9,000 acres of land in and around Bangalore from encroachers. Out of this the BDA had been asked to from two lakh sites and build 50,000 houses for distribution among the poor. He said his aim was to ensure that there was no one in the State without housing in the next three to five years.

Deputy Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa said that landless people had to wait for the Janata Dal (S)-Bharatiya Janata Party Government to come to power to get a housing site.

The coalition Government had taken pro-poor policy decisions such as the ban on lotteries and arrack. He said Bhagyalakshmi scheme was aimed at empowering the poor, especially women.

37,000 applications

Deputy Commissioner M.A. Sadiq the Government had received over 37,000 applications from the landless poor in the Bangalore Urban district and the Government had made available 17,000 sites for them so far. Sites would be provided within a year to the rest of the applicants, he said.

The Ministers Jagadish Shettar, Ramachandra Gowda, Katta Subramanya Naidu and R. Ashok, and H.T. Sangliana, MP, spoke.

Over 3,000 people had gathered at the Palace Grounds to receive documents pertaining to their houses.

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