The centre has raised its concerns via a letter to the states, stating that the “most deserving” intended beneficiaries have yet to get a house under its flagship rural housing scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (rural).
In order to empower people to get their own homes, Prime Minister Modi had announced a comprehensive ana progressive mission, ‘Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana – Housing for All’ on 17 June, 2015. This scheme had two components, one targeting the urban regions- PMAY-U and the other for the rural/gramin areas- PMAY-G.
The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana- Gramin (PMAY-G) has been devised in line with Government’s commitment of providing ‘Housing for All’ by 2022 in the rural areas. The scheme aims at providing a pucca house with basic amenities to all houseless householder living in kutcha and dilapidated houses by 2022.
In its letter, the Rural Development Ministry stated that out of nearly 4,72,000 landless people in the country identified under the PM Awas Yojana (Rural), only 12% or 56,694 have got land from the respective state governments to build a house.
Though as of now, close to 6.5 million houses have been finished as part of the scheme, the centre is still short of achieving the 10 million target it set to attain by March 31.
The ministry in its letter which was a follow-up to a previous letter which was sent by Union Rural Development Minister, Narendra Singh Tomar, in September 2018 reiterated that “Providing land to landless beneficiaries is crucial in achieving the target of construction of one crore houses. These landless beneficiaries are the most deserving PMAY-G beneficiaries.”
It further stated how while a few states had taken the initiative to implement the program, the overall progress in the nation was still ‘far from satisfactory’.
As per annexures attached with the letter, states including Assam, Bihar, Maharashtra and Odisha are amongst the bad performers as they have provided land to just 1% of the targeted people until July 27, 2018, West Bengal has been seen as the worst performing state as it has not yet provided land to a single person under the scheme.