Hyderabad: Despite collectors instructing the double bedroom house beneficiaries to apply online in Mee Seva centres, several are still thronging to collectorates in the bone-chilling cold. Though the numbers have come down, at least 100 beneficiaries visit the district collector’s office daily.
The state government has not delegated authority to identify and short-list the beneficiaries to ward level, division level, or constituency level authorities. Despite 5.2 manual applications, ea-ch collectorate received 50,000 application on an average in 10 days incl-uding Hyderabad, Rang-areddy, Medchal- Malk-ajgiri and Sangareddy since four and half years. Ever since the government announced onli-ne applications through Mee Seva centres, each district authority has received 50,000 applications on an average since the last 15 days. The state government is planning to give two lakh 2BHK houses, but there are about 86.6 lakh beneficiaries across the state who have white ration cards that make them eligible to apply.
Beneficiaries have not yet been shortlisted but those who had applied earlier have been flocking to district and mandal revenue offices to check the status of their applications. The queues are so long that public announcements have be-en made that applications are not being acce-pted in district offices and entrance gates have been locked to control the crowds.
The public has been visiting the collectorate offices from 7:30 am, as-suming that their applications will be accepted and the 2BHK houses will be sanctioned on a first come-first serve basis. Hoardings outside all collectorates say that manual applications are not accepted here, but still several people particularly the less well-informed elderly, have been visiting in their hundreds with their applications.
A collectorate official said that the state government has not furnished clear guidelines. In rural areas, the local MLA would finalise the list of 2BHK beneficiaries and the district collector would sanction them after scrutiny, but there were no such guidelines for collectorates in Greater Hyderabad region. “For 1 lakh 2BHK houses more than seven lakh beneficiaries have applied so far in the GHMC limits,” the official said.
He said applications must be made through Mee Seva centres and the status of the application will be notified at regular intervals once the scrutiny begins.
A ruling party MLA who does not want to be named said that the state government, in order to weed out irregularities in the 2BHK housing scheme, has been planning to fix a nominal rent for some time so that the house would be sanctioned to the true beneficiary and there will be regular surprise inspections to verify that the true beneficiary was residing in it.
