Panel to probe housing scam

• Irregularities in allotment of 2.5 lakh houses
• Assembly decides to set up House Committee

Hyderabad: The Andhra Pradesh State Assembly on Thursday announced constituting a House Committee which would probe into the irregularities.

The State government feels that large-scale irregularities have taken place in allotment of around 2.5 lakh houses under the Indiramma Housing Scheme in the united Andhra Pradesh State when Congress was ruling the State.

The then government had targeted to construct 43 lakh housing units. Initially each unit was given about Rs 40,000 towards loan and subsidy. However, the same was increased later on in the second phase and the project cost was estimated to rise to about Rs 600 crore.

After coming to power, the TDP government has decided to clear the mess and hence started seeding of beneficiaries with Aadhaar cards and go in for geo-tagging of the houses provided under the scheme. This would enable the officials not only to identify beneficiaries under the scheme, but also houses and their location.

“So far 85 per cent of the Aadhaar seeding and geo tagging is over across the 13 districts, and we are expecting that this would be completed by the end of this month,” an official said. Once this exercise is over then, it would be easy for them to pinpoint where the irregularities have taken place, the official said.

Senior officials of the department also said there were two kinds of irregularities: Selling housing units to non-beneficiaries, and embezzlement of funds towards purchase of construction materials for non-existent houses.

These irregularities were already pointed out by the CAG. Similar irregularities were even brought to light by a CID probe in Telangana.