Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Monday announced that his election promise of constructing two-bedroom houses for poor will take off in May.

He also announced that orders regularising the services of contract employees will be issued shortly and that the unemployed who are opposing jobs for contract staff will also be accommodated in government service. Mr. Rao was addressing a well-attended public meeting of Telangana Rashtra Samiti on the occasion of its foundation day at the sprawling Parade Grounds here.

The crowd swelled in numbers towards sundown when Mr. Rao arrived. Till then, cultural artistes entertained the crowd who came from various districts. Taking the mike around 7 p.m., Mr. Rao said he was aware that people were anxious to know the fate of schemes the government had committed to implement. Apart from two-bedroom houses and jobs for contract employees, the government was committed to creating one lakh jobs for the unemployed in two years.

The process will commence the day after the committee headed by C.R. Kamalanathan finalised the bifurcation of State-level posts between the two States, he said. In the power sector itself, youth will get about 25,000 jobs as the government was headed for a huge expansion of the sector.

Mr. Rao also said the programme of free and compulsory education from kindergarten to post-graduation will be launched on an experimental basis next year.

A farmer who was on the way to the city to attend the TRS public meeting died in a road accident at Shamshabad on Monday evening.

E. Gopal, 45, of Kondapur village in Mahabubnagar district, started for Hyderabad along with some others in a private jeep. En route, the driver halted at Thondupally for a tea break. “As Gopal was crossing the road, a vehicle heading towards Shadnagar hit him.