Centre looks to speed up ‘housing for all’, advance deadline by 3 months

Construction of houses (Representative Image)

The Centre is looking to bring forward by three months its deadline for the ‘Housing for All’ initiative to December 2023 and the rural development ministry is in talks to quicken the pace of construction, The Economic Times has reported.

Around 29.5 million houses are to be built in rural India under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Gramin) or PMAY-G scheme. The plan to “speed-up processes”  comes ahead of the general elections due in May 2024.

The houses were to be completed by 2022 but the work was disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak in 2020. The deadline was revised deadline to March 2024.

So far, 28.6 million houses have been sanctioned and 22.1 million built. The ministry was “firming up” an action plan to speed-up processes, the report cited a ministry official as saying.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report.

For FY23, the ministry had envisaged 5.20 million houses being built against 4.24 million in FY22. As many as 3.85 million had been completed by March 22, the source added. They are confident the target will be met in the last two weeks of the financial year 2022-23.

The government has also revised and increased the outlay for PMAY-G for FY23 to Rs 48,422 crore from Rs 20,000 crore to refresh the pace of work.

Under PMAY-G, the Centre bears 60 percent of the cost of construction of houses (this goes up to 90 percent in the Northeast and hilly regions and 100 percent in union territories) with states pitching the rest.