Moving towards fulfilling its another pre-poll promise of ‘housing for all’, the Punjab Government has approved ‘Punjab Shehri Awas Yojana-2017’ to provide free housing to eligible houseless SC and BC urban families.
As per the scheme, urban households with an annual income of less than Rs three lakh in the first phase and Rs five lakh in the second phase would be eligible to claim free housing facility. Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh issued strict instructions to the concerned departments to take utmost care to ensure that the scheme impacts the real beneficiaries.
Often the true beneficiaries fail to get the benefit of social welfare schemes due to errors of inclusion — where the wrong persons end up getting included in the list, or errors of exclusion — where the real beneficiaries remain out of the ambit, usually lacking even awareness of the schemes, he observed, adding that extreme care should be taken to avoid such errors.
The scheme also envisages subsidized housing through in-situ Slum Re-development to eligible slum dwellers, besides affordable housing through concession in EDC, ClU etc to private developers, said the spokesperson.
It also provides for elimination of stamp duty or registration charges or any other state government cess or social infrastructure fund etc for eligible beneficiaries or urban poor having annual income from all sources amounting to less than Rs three lakh.
The scheme would also provide facility of cheap home loans to lower Income Group (lIG) families having annual income from all sources less than Rs six lakh and Middle Income Group (MIG) families having annual income from all sources less than Rs 18 lakh.
land from the departments of Rural Development, local Government or any other Department, suitable for construction of Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) houses, would be transferred free of cost to the Housing and Urban Development Department.
“In case the land identified for this purpose belongs to some other department of the government, the state level sanctioning and monitoring committee (SlSMC) will be authorized to take decision to utilize this land through local Government Department (Urban local Bodies) or Housing and Urban Development Department (Development Authorities) in their respective jurisdiction under the scheme, with the consent of the concerned Department,” said the spokesperson.