Two years into the TDP-led government, the promise that carried its housing plank — 3 cents of land in villages, 2 cents in towns, for every poor family — remains largely on paper. What has moved is in the opposite direction: existing allotments cancelled, sanctioned construction stalled, and a ceremonial distribution in Mangalagiri handed people nothing.
The manifesto, in the party’s own words.
The TDP’s election manifesto committed to two things under “Quality houses for all the poor”: sanctioning 2 cents in towns and 3 cents in villages for house construction, and completing pucca houses for everyone already holding a sanctioned patta. While none, has been delivered.
The cancellations in the capital region
Under the previous government’s Navaratnalu–Pedalandariki Illu scheme, 50,793 women were allotted house sites across 1,402 acres within CRDA limits. The TDP had opposed this in court while in opposition, arguing that settling the poor in the capital region would damage it. On returning to power in 2024, the government cancelled those allotments outright — and, critically, allotted no alternative land in their place. Roughly 50,000 families who held valid pattas now hold nothing.
The Mangalagiri event
Distribution ceremony held by minister Nara Lokesh in his own constituency, where the sites handed over were plots families had already occupied for years. What was staged as fresh allotment, it argues, was administrative regularisation — the paperwork catching up with a reality that predated the government, presented as generosity.
The record it is measured against
Under the previous YSRCP Administration, house sites were issued free to 31 lakh poor women, laid out across 17,000 YSR Jagananna colonies, with construction permits for more than 19 lakh houses. Beneficiaries received a sanctioned unit cost of Rs 1.80 lakh, Rs 15,000 worth of subsidised construction material across 12 categories, and a further Rs 40,000 — roughly Rs 2.70 lakh per family on land registered in a woman’s name worth between Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 15 lakh at market rates.
Over 9 lakh houses finished and handed over by the 2024 election, with more than 8 lakh still under construction — 1.28 lakh of them complete but not handed over, another 99,000 at slab stage. That unfinished pipeline is precisely what the TDP manifesto promised to carry across the line. Two years on, and nothing has been done.
The Betrayal
This is a housing programme running in reverse: no new sites sanctioned under the manifesto commitment, half-built houses from the previous scheme left where they stood, valid pattas in the capital region withdrawn with nothing offered instead, and a photo opportunity where a policy should have been.For lakhs of poor families still waiting for a roof over their heads, the difference is clear: one government delivered both land and houses on a massive scale, while the other has reduced the issue to empty promises and cancellation of existing benefits.
