Rs. 550-crores for housing in city: Raghuveera Reddy

The State government will spend Rs. 550-crores to provide housing for 31,000 eligible families in the city under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), said Minister for Agriculture N. Raghuveera Reddy on Friday.

The Minister inaugurated two blocks, of 32 houses each, constructed under the scheme at Radhanagar in Kundavari Kandrika. The Minister, along with MP Lagadapati Rajagopal, Kankipadu MLA Devineni Rajasekhar (Nehru), Mayor Mallika Begum and Deputy Mayor Samanthapudi Narasaraju, participated in the house-warming ceremony (boiling of milk until it boils over) in a few new dwellings.

Mr. Reddy said “development and prosperity will swell up in the lives of poor in the way milk boils over.” He said it was no more the privilege of the rich to look down from multi-storeyed buildings. Even the poor would be able to live in apartment buildings. For a token amount of Rs. 5,000 from the beneficiary, the State government was giving them a house worth Rs. 5 lakhs.

‘No right to talk’

Describing the erstwhile Telugu Desam Government as a “non-performer”, Mr. Reddy said leaders of the TDP, who relegated the ideals of a great leader like NTR to the dustbin, had no right to talk. The party had failed to perform in its nine-year rule, but was now promising to give the people everything free. “If they say one word against us, they should be prepared to hear a hundred words in reply,” Mr. Reddy said. Mr. Rajasekhar said TDP leaders were trying to kick up a racket, but no other chief Minister could extend welfare and development to the people like Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy.

The Minister earlier laid a foundation stone in Pathapadu village for several infrastructure schemes that would be taken up by the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation at an estimated cost of Rs. 1 crore in compensation for dumping of solid waste in the village limits. The Minister also inaugurated a 1,500-KL water tank constructed at a cost of Rs. 93 lakhs in Ajit Singh Nagar and laid the foundation stone for a cement concrete road in Kundavari Kandrika and Vambay Colony.