Karimnagar: Unavailability of land likely to hit the ambitious double bedroom housing scheme. Currently, implementation of the 3-acre cultivatable land to Dalit families scheme is getting delayed due to non-availability of land. In particular, securing land in urban parts of any district across the state could be a big deal.
According to sources in revenue department, land is available in rural parts of most of the Assembly constituencies, but is not suitable for constructing these colonies. “We could not find land on the outskirts of village. But, we have identified land located far from outskirts of villages and surrounded by bushes and filled with rocks. So, these new houses cannot be built there because the land is not suitable for living,” opined a revenue divisional official.
Importantly, finding suitable land for residing in towns and cities of any Assembly constituency appears to be a Herculean task, thanks to real estate boom. For instance, revenue authorities could not identify open spaces in and around Jagtial town for constructing these double bedroom houses following mushrooming of new colonies and due to soaring cost of land.
The land is not vacant on the outskirts of many cities of the state because of the government’s decision’s to carve out new districts. In the meantime, housing scheme introduced by previous governments has not been accomplished in urban areas and many other places due to unavailability of suitable land.
Barely 153 Dalit families were provided with the 3 acres of land each under the scheme. A total of 394 acres of land was distributed so far.
Over 350 persons came forward to sell their land, but officials did not finalise. According to surveys, over 55,000 families have no land at all.
