Allotment of 2BHK houses in Bhadrachalam caught in controversy

According to the affected beneficiaries, during the previous BRS regime, as many as 250 double bedroom houses were sanctioned in the town; construction of 150 houses has been completed

Kothagudem: The allotment of double bedroom houses in Bhadrachalam town has been caught up in a controversy as the revenue officials allegedly discarded a first list of beneficiaries and prepared a new list sans previously selected beneficiaries.

According to the affected beneficiaries, during the previous BRS regime, as many as 250 double bedroom houses were sanctioned in the town; construction of 150 houses has been completed.

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In 2023, applications were received from the beneficiaries. Bhadrachalam tahsildar along with revenue staff conducted enquiries several times, prepared a final list of 150 eligible beneficiaries for allotting houses and it was submitted to the district Collector.

However, the houses were not given to initially selected beneficiaries due to political pressures. Allotment of houses was pending for one and half a year. Recently the officials reportedly started a process to select new beneficiaries and secretly handed over houses to them because of some political reasons.

Beneficiaries, Punem Pradeep Kumar, B Malleshwar Rao, Pathuluri Kavitha, P Chamundeshwari and Sunnam Manjula filed a writ petition before the High Court challenging the officials’ decision to prepare a second list and discarding the earlier one.

The petitioners stated that injustice was done to them by non-implementation of Bhadrachalam tahsildar proceedings RC No. C/124/2023 dated 5-06-2023.

Speaking to Telangana Today, the counsel for the petitioners, PV Krishnama Chary informed that the matter came up for hearing before Justice CV Bhaskar Reddy’s bench on Monday.

The judge heard the arguments of the petitioners as well as the government pleader and questioned how the beneficiaries could be selected again on some pretext without holding the gram sabha and not allotting the houses to the beneficiaries already selected.

The judge said that houses should be allocated to the eligible beneficiaries through the gram sabha under the provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) PESA Act, 1996 by majority resolution and the work to be done within the law should not be done arbitrarily.

The government pleader said that houses were being allocated to Godavari flood affected families and residents at karakatta, responding which the judge stated that the matter was related to the petition filed by the beneficiaries in the first list. He sought to know how the others could be given houses without allotting houses to the beneficiaries selected last year.

Krishnama Chary further informed that the judge directed the petitioners to submit their request for houses when the gram sabha was conducted and told the local gram panchayat as well as the district Collector to consider the request of the petitioners and make appropriate allocations within three months.