Ponguleti seeks three lakh rural houses from Centre

Housing Minister Ponguleti Srinivasa Reddy has urged the Centre to immediately sanction at least three lakh houses for the State during the current financial year.

In a representation submitted to Union Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the Minister said there was a massive pending demand for houses in rural Telangana due to prolonged neglect of housing construction between 2014 and 2023. He met the Union Minister during his visit to Hyderabad and submitted a representation to him.

The Minister said the previous government had completely failed to secure even a single house from the Centre in their decade rule. He pointed out that, as per the directions of Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, the State government has been repeatedly requesting the Centre for the past two years to sanction houses for rural areas, but there has been no positive response so far.

“At least during this financial year, the Centre should sanction three lakh houses for rural Telangana,” he appealed adding that the goverment is already constructing around four lakh Indiramma houses this year.

Mr Ponguleti said that Telangana had not been part of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana – Gramin (PMAY-G) 1.0 earlier. However, after the formation of the Congress government in 2023, the State officially joined PMAY-G 2.0 in accordance with the guidelines of the Union Ministry of Rural Development.

Although the Union Cabinet approved PMAY-G 2.0 in August 2024 and decided to allocate houses on a saturation basis after updating the Awaas+ 2018 survey, allocations for 2024–25 and 2025–26 were made to other States based on old data. Since Telangana was not part of PMAY-G 1.0, it did not have any pending 2018 data.

The State government has since conducted an extensive door-to-door survey and prepared a fresh database of eligible beneficiaries. As per Central guidelines, another survey was conducted through the Awaas+ 2024 mobile application, identifying 11.57 lakh eligible rural families.

Considering the huge backlog of housing demand accumulated over the past 12 years, Minister Ponguleti urged the Centre to understand Telangana’s unique situation and sanction three lakh houses in the current financial year and another two lakh houses next year.