3 lac people will get house site pattas: Karunanidhi

Chennai, Aug 1: The Tamil Nadu government will distribute house site pattas to 300,000 poor people by the end of March next year, Chief Minister M Karunanidhi said.

A decision to this effect was taken at the two-day conference of District Collectors and Police officers which concluded here last evening, he told reporters.

Initiated as a special scheme by the DMK government in 1996 which had benefitted 14.87 lakh people so far, he said this was for first time that an ambitious target of providing three lakh house pattas has been set as the highest number given so far in a financial year was 2,50,811 pattas in 1997-98.

The meeting decided to set up a committee of select District Collectors to suggest ways to further streamline and improve the land distribution scheme for landless agricultural labourers.

The Government also decided to use the services of private hospitals to clear the backlog of children of poor parents waiting to get heart-related procedures done.

''If such families had an annual income less than Rs 50,000, the Government will provide Rs 70,000 for complicated open heart surgeries, Rs 30,000 for ordinary open heart surgery and Rs 10,000 for non-invasive heart interventions,'' he added.

UNI