Newly sworn-in Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs (HUA) Hardeep Singh Puri on Monday said the urban housing and development challenges are "daunting" but he would do his best to meet the targets. "The urban housing and development challenges are daunting and transformative and I intend to give my best to meet the targets under various new urban missions," Puri said after he assumed office as the Minister of State (Independent charge). The Minister will be attending the inauguration of the first phase of 8.5-km stretch of lucknow Metro between Transport Nagar and Charbagh on Tuesday.
Puri later held a two-hour review of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) and sought information about various aspects of the target of ensuring decent pucca houses to all the needy urban poor by 2022. He said the priorities for urban sector had already been outlined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and he would work on them.
Puri said that various new urban missions launched over the last three years have been doing well on the ground and there was "no doubt we are on way to accomplishing the tasks in given time frames".
He said there were two sets of targets -- some of them are to be achieved by 2019 and others by 2022.
Officials said that the Ministries of Urban Development and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation were only recently merged to form the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. Since 2014, the twin charges were under M Venkaiah Naidu until he became Vice President, and then briefly under Narendra Singh Tomar as additional charge.
The ministry is currently in charge of several key urban and housing policies such as the Smart City Mission, AMRUT, Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban), the Metro policy, and the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana for providing housing for all.
Under Naidu, a key achievement was enactment of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016, but many other missions are behind target - construction of affordable houses, declaration of Open Defecation Free (ODF) which only Gujarat and Andhra have attained so far, or ensuring 100 per cent collection, disposal, and processing of waste. Also, several policies, from Smart Cities to the new Metro policy, have faced criticism from urban planners for relying too heavily on private investment.