Union Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri said in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday that Andhra Pradesh got the largest number of houses (20,28,899) sanctioned under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban).
“But only 3,60,325 houses have been completed. Andhra Pradesh is followed by Uttar Pradesh, which has been sanctioned 17,72,564 houses, of which 7,01,594 have been completed,” Mr. Hardeep Singh Puri said.
Committed assistance
Responding to a question by BJP member G.V.L. Narasimha Rao, the Union Minister said the sanctioned houses in A.P. involved an investment of ₹89,377 crore, which included a committed Central assistance of ₹30,731 crore. Out of this, a sum of ₹9,311 crore had been released so far, he said.
He said the slow progress of construction of houses in A.P., as informed by the State government, was mainly due to the cancellation of 6,22,716 houses in 2020 out of the total number of 12,32,237 houses sanctioned between FY 2015-16 and FY 2018-19.
This was because the beneficiaries were either living in disputed lands, or had migrated permanently to cities, or were unwilling to remove existing old houses for getting new ones constructed on their own, or were reluctant to opt for multi-storeyed houses as they preferred house site pattas under the State’s flagship programme ‘Pedalandariki Illu’. With this, 6,09,521 houses remained to be constructed, he said.
A total of 13,76,480 houses were sanctioned between FY 2019-20 and FY 2020- 21, and the beneficiaries were formally allotted land from December 25, 2020, till the end of January 2021.
In 2019-20 and 2020-21, the construction activities were affected due to re-tendering taken up by the State government, especially in the Affordable Housing in Partnership projects and also because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. Puri further said that the State government informed that it undertook a comprehensive survey in 2019 and had identified 30.75 lakh beneficiaries, to whom housing plots were allotted and 24.10 lakh were in the urban areas. Of them, 15.10 lakh had already been sanctioned houses under the beneficiary-led construction component of PMAY.
The State government was advised to ground at least 95% of 20.29 lakh houses and complete 75% of them before any new sanction could be considered by the Central Sanctioning and Monitoring Committee. At present, 40% houses were grounded, of which 44% had been completed.
