Indira Awas Yojana (IAY), the Government’s flagship scheme aiming to provide shelter to homeless BPl families, has floundered badly with the CAG noting that during the period from April 2008 to March 2013, financial aids were doled out to ineligible beneficiaries in several States, funds diverted to other programmes and there was a delay in completion of houses beyond two years.
In its report tabled in Parliament on Friday, the CAG also noted that while several States failed to assess actual shortage of shelter, some of those who got the benefits were already having pucca houses.
“It was observed (audited data covering 168 districts from 27 States and four Union Territories for the period from April 2008 to March 2013) that several ineligible beneficiaries were selected.
“In 12 States, 36,751 non-BPl families were given assistance of Rs89.15 crore. In 11 States, 10,184 ineligible beneficiaries were selected and Rs31.73 crore was paid to them,” said the performance audit of the IAY States.
The report said in seven States, 33,536 beneficiaries were selected from outside the permanent IAY wait-lists and paid assistance of Rs138.02 crore.
“In eight States, 1,654 beneficiaries who received aid of Rs5.37 crore, already had pucca houses. In eight States, 5,824 beneficiaries were selected more than once and payment of Rs14.67 crore was made to them.
“In six States, allotment of dwelling units in the name of female members of the household was not preferred,” the CAG said.The Government auditor noted that the assessment of housing shortage was mainly based on the estimation of Working Group under the Planning Commission on Rural Housing.
It, however, noted that the actual housing shortage (essential for identification of beneficiaries) was not assessed in 14 States viz Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Kerala, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Uttarakhand, West Bengal and three districts of Punjab.
There were several cases of delay in completion of houses beyond two years. “In 48 selected districts in States —Assam Bihar, Gujarat, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Meghalaya and Rajasthan — 61,293 houses remained incomplete despite a lapse of more than two years which resulted in unfruitful expenditure of Rs150.22 crore in respect of these incomplete houses,” noted the report.
“We found that due to slow pace of utilisation/under utilisation of funds there was deduction of Rs2,451 crore from their due allocations… This resulted in denial assistance to 7.25 lakh targeted beneficiaries,” the CAG said adding that Rs37 crore was found to be diverted to other schemes.