The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) revealed on Wednesday that 1,00,395 affordable houses have been completed under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) so far and more than 6,00,000 similar houses are at various stages of construction.
The Ministry on Wednesday sanctioned construction of over 1,00,000 more houses for the urban poor with an investment of Rs4,200 crore. With this, the total investment approved under this scheme stands at Rs1,00,466 crore, three times the investment approved during ten years of the UPA’s rule.
In terms of numbers, the Ministry has approved construction of over 18.75 lakh houses for the economically weaker sections in 2,151 cities and towns across the country since the launch of the scheme in June 2015.
According to the 2011 Census, around 3.3 crore families or roughly 16 crore Indians, which is close to the total population of Bangladesh, did not own a house.
Under the Housing Mission for urban areas, houses of up to 30 sq mt carpet area would be built with basic civic infrastructure like water, sewerage, roads, power, telephone lines and social infrastructure such as community centres, parks, playgrounds and livelihood centres, etc.
“States/Union Territories (UTs) have been given flexibility in this regard to make necessary changes as deemed appropriate by them in consultation with the Central Government. States/UTs have also been given flexibility in appraising and approving housing projects at their level to enable faster implementation of the scheme. Houses built under the Housing Mission would either be registered in the name of women or jointly in the name of wife and husband,” officials said.
“In the latest round of sanctions, BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh got the lion’s share, with 57,131 houses approved, followed by Tamil Nadu with 24,576,” said an official.
“Till now, Madhya Pradesh tops the overall list of States with over 2.66 lakh houses sanctioned, with a total investment of Rs 18,283 crore. Tamil Nadu is placed second with over 2.52 lakh houses sanctioned with a total project cost of Rs 9,112 crore,” he added.
The Ministry had asked State Governments and UTs to submit proposals for the construction of affordable houses so that the deadline of the NDA Government’s “Housing for All” scheme can be met.
Aiming to provide housing to common people across the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the ‘Housing for All’ initiative in June 2015 with a target of construction of 2 crore houses by the year 2022. About 4,000 cities are covered under this scheme. In the first phase, the Government planned to construct one crore houses by 2019. However, the scheme is moving at a slow pace because of lack of response by some States.
“So far, construction is going at a slow pace”, said the sources. Under PMAY (Urban), Central assistance of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2.35 lakh per each dwelling unit is provided to eligible beneficiaries under the four components of the scheme.
Gujarat leads in construction, having so far built 59,515 affordable houses followed by Tamil Nadu-34,976 and Madhya Pradesh-29,467. As per data, 20,007 affordable houses are under construction with 16,002 being built in Bihar, 13,449 in Rajasthan, 10,212 in Jharkhand, 9,335 in Karnataka, 5,671 in Andhra Pradesh and 4,105 in Odisha.
A McKinsey report in 2010 had revealed that approximately 25 million urban households in India cannot afford housing. The report expected the number to reach 38 million by 2030.