1/3rd of weaker section houses remain 'invisible' in AP

The state government initiates action into over Rs 4000-crore housing irregularities

The Andhra Pradesh government has initiated action into massive irregularities that has come to light in the weaker section housing programme where one-third of the housing units sanctioned between 2004-05 and 2013-14, valued about Rs 4,149.93 crore, could not be traced.

The government action includes recovery of money from the so-called beneficiaries apart from suitable disciplinary action against those staff found responsible for these irregularities, according to a senior government functionary.

The state government has found that around 1.44 million houses out of the 4.14 million units sanctioned over a period of 10 years remained ‘invisible’ following a  massive effort of geo-tagging and Aadhaar-seeding of each unit.

During this 10-year period, which had seen three Congress chief ministers, the government had spent a total of Rs 14,008.24 crore on the housing programme, according to the statistics available with the government.

These also include the housing units and the money sanctioned to the state by the Centre under the Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) scheme.

Data involving the geo-tagging exercise show that about 33.76 per cent of the housing units and close to 30 per cent of the money spent on the housing programme did not reach the eligible beneficiaries.

While the alleged irregularities at an average 30-33 per cent level among the total sanctioned units seems to be a norm across different schemes within the housing programme, there was a lot of variation when it came to district-wise numbers.

For instance, the number of houses that could not be geo-tagged ranged as high as 47 per cent in the case of Visakhapatnam and West Godavari districts and as low as 20 per cent in the case of Guntur district.

The other districts, which also reported high percentage of unverifiable housing units include Anantapur (41.12 per cent), Kurnool (38.1 per cent), East Godavari (38 per cent), Vizianagaram (35 per cent) and Kadapa (35 per cent).

However, the year-wise pattern of unverifiable housing units shows a declining trend starting from 2010-11 (25 per cent) to 2013-14(17 per cent).