The Hindu

Mangalore, May 8: Minister for Housing D T Jayakumar said on Sunday that the State Government would construct three lakh houses under the Ashraya housing scheme during the current financial year.

Addressing presspersons here, he said the scheme had been languishing for the past three years over confusion on who should control the process of identifying the beneficiaries and approving their list.

Jayakumar said the target of building three lakh houses could be achieved and preparations for it were under way. The Cabinet was expected to take a decision on matters pertaining to the administrative control of the scheme - whether to leave it to legislators concerned or gram panchayats.

Noting that Karnataka was in the midst of its golden jubilee celebrations, he said steps had been taken to develop a village each in 202 Assembly constituencies as a "model village" under a pilot project.

Stating that the MLAs concerned would choose the villages to be developed on the lines of model villages in China, he said the scheme would be completed by 2006-07. The aim of the project was to provide basic amenities such as drainage, drinking water supply, proper roads and hygienic facilities in the selected villages, Jayakumar said. "It is the Government's intention to provide the best of facilities to rural masses,'' he added.

Stating that the Government was keen on ensuring "Slum-free Karnataka" by 2015, the Minister said that an action plan was being prepared for the purpose. Focus of this scheme was to develop basic infrastructure in slums. Besides, the Ministry was keen on emulating a vertical development model for slums adopted by Mumbai in city corporation and city municipal council limits in the State. Under the scheme, slums would be handed over to private developers for development. They would construct houses for slum dwellers on a part of the slum and develop the rest for commercial purpose.

A survey for the purpose was on. Only those residents of slums who were below the poverty line and had voted in the 2004 elections would be eligible for houses constructed by private developers. The basic idea was to ensure development of slums with no government expenditure, the Minister said.

Jayakumar said that he would also approach the Government seeking a legislation making it compulsory for urban development authorities and private developers to reserve 10 per cent of the sites in the new layouts for the poor. "While we need labour of these people to develop layouts, they in turn end up creating slums next to the layouts,'' he added.

On the rampant misuse of houses allotted to the poor Jayakumar admitted that a few unscrupulous elements were "cheating the Government" by renting out houses to others. "I am exploring the possibilities of filing criminal cases against such persons.

In some cases, people end up owning two or three houses in housing enclaves meant for the poor, he said.