Aiming to ensure ‘Housing for All’ by 2022, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on Wednesday gave its green signal to the Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Ministry’s programme to construct more than two crore houses across the country including for slum dwellers in collaboration with the private sector.
Priority will be given to towns and cities along the banks of the River Ganga and its tributaries to ensure cleanliness along their banks. Six lakh houses will be built in Delhi, 16 lakh in Mumbai and four lakh each in Chennai and Kolkata, a statement from the PMO said, adding these figures may go up after the demand assessment is completed. The HUPA Ministry can now go to expenditure finance Committee (EFC) after incorporating suggestions of the PMO, a senior official from the Ministry said.
As per the decision taken in meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narender Modi, the programme will begin with a baseline survey to assess the demand for such housing and identify resource requirements. “The programme proposes to build two crore houses across the nation by 2022. This would cover both slum housing and affordable housing for weaker sections. It will cover urban poor living in slums, urban homeless and new migrants to urban areas in search of shelter. It would cover metros, small towns and all urban areas,” the statement said.
The Government has set the goal of ‘Housing for All’ with water connection, toilet facilities and electricity to be achieved by 2022, by when the nation will complete 75 years of its Independence. “The meeting was to finalise the contours of the ‘Housing for All’ mission, which is one of the priority commitments of the Government,” it said.
As a large portion of the programme is to be financed in a PPP mode by leveraging land and other resources in urban areas, the Prime Minister directed all the departments concerned to immediately finalise the financing models. Modi emphasised at the meeting the need to ensure that there is no compromise in quality during the roll-out of this ambitious housing programme. He also directed that safety concerns of specific areas, such as coastal zones, eco-sensitive zones and disaster-prone areas be factored into the planning process in cities.