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Housing dept blues render stats wing homeless
Housing dept blues render stats wing homeless. Call it ill-fate or bad luck, but the Economics and Statistics wing of the State government seems to be paying the price for problems plaguing the Housing department.
The proposed spacious building for the Economics and Statistics department remains on paper, thanks to the Housing department’s bankruptcy
Hyderabad: Call it ill-fate or bad luck, but the Economics and Statistics wing of the State government seems to be paying the price for problems plaguing the Housing department.
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About three years ago, in the undivided Andhra Pradesh, the then government had taken a decision to move the department into a new and spacious building within the premises of the Economics and Statistics Directorate in Khairtabad.
The Housing department was asked to take up construction work and accordingly, the basic structure of the building is ready. But it seems to have been affected by the bifurcation issues.
The construction work on the ground-plus-5-floors building came to a halt. Plans were drawn to construct a sprawling building with 30,000 sft of built up area. Since private players could not be roped in directly, the Housing department was tasked with the construction responsibilities.
The whole project was estimated to cost Rs 12 crore. Economics and Statistics wing released Rs 6 crore in two installments during November 2012. In the post bifurcation scenario, the works came to standstill as the banks accounts of Housing department were frozen by Income Tax officials for non-payment of TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) amount for the last seven years.
So much so, that the contractor had not even removed the scaffoldings saying that his bills had not been cleared. So far, about Rs 6 crore has been spent on this building. The construction works began in August 2013 and the new building was set to be completed by November 2014. However, the deadline was extended to May 2015.
Meanwhile, the Income Tax department froze the bank account of the Housing department in January 2015. The TDS arrears that were around Rs 400 crores some years ago now, along with penal interest, rose to Rs 2,250 crore which is due, according to a senior official.
After the Congress came to power in 2004, various lands and properties of HMDA, APIIC and Housing departments were disposed of to pool up funds for welfare schemes like Jalayagnam and others. The Income Tax department levied TDS on those transactions.
The then Chief Minister YS Rajashekara Reddy lobbied with the Centre for waiver. Although it did not fructify, IT department did not step in to collect the tax dues for the next few years. Thus the dues rose to over Rs 2,000 crores in 2015.
Sources said Chabbra Associates, which got the construction tender, spent almost Rs 4.5 crore but received only Rs 3 crore payment in the form of bills and the department still owes Rs 1.5 crore to the contractor.
By Mahesh Avadhutha
