Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Friday sought the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal intervention to bring more rural poor people into the ambit of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Gramin) by relaxing the norms of the scheme.
In his letter to the Prime Minister, the Chief Minister said that the definition of the kutcha house (under Socio-Economic Caste Census) was very restrictive, causing a large number of poor and deserving people of Punjab to be deprived of the benefits under PMAY(G).
Changing the norms would ensure that the maximum number of rural poor population gets covered under this pro-poor initiative, thereby realizing the ground realities prevailing in Punjab, he said.
Referring to his earlier meeting with Modi on September 1, 2018, where the latter had raised the issue of low level of performance of Punjab under PMAY(G), Capt Amarinder said that Punjab then ranked 25th among all States but, within just nine months, had improved its ranking to third.
“The Government will continue to work to ensure that every rural poor household has a pucca house. However, a large population of the poor was excluded from PMAY(G) benefits due to the restrictive nature of the norms,” he said.
In order to obviate this problem, the Chief Minister suggested a more inclusive definition of kutcha house envisaging “predominant material of wall of dwelling room – grass, thatch, bamboo or plastic, polythene or mud, unburnt or burnt bricks or wood or stone not packed with mortar, Or Predominant material of roof of dwelling room – grass or thatch, bamboo, wood or mud or plastic, polythene or wooden planks (balas) or handmade tiles” instead of its existing definition, which excluded burnt bricks and wooden planks (balas).
The Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh requested that in the proposed definition the two components of burnt bricks and wooden planks (balas) be included to extend the benefit of the scheme to the deserving rural poor populace, thus appreciating the ground reality prevailing in the state of Punjab.