(FE)
The government has sanctioned 30.76 lakh houses since the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban), housing and urban affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri said. “Currently, 15.65 lakh houses have been grounded and are at various stages of construction, and about 4.13 lakh houses have been constructed since the launch of the mission,” Puri said at the launch of a national workshop on the PMAY (Urban) and the Swachh Bharat Mission. The minister pegged the urban housing requirement at 12 million and said that the government is pursuing the reforms such as stamp duty exemption and single window clearance to ease the housing process. According to the Census of India, 2011 about 13.92 million households live in 33,510 slums across the country. The target of the PMAY (Urban) scheme is “essentially the urban poor” through in-situ rehabilitation along with an assistance of Rs 1 lakh per house.
Launched on June 25, 2015, the aim of PMAY is to address the gap in housing demand and supply in urban areas in respect of economically weaker sections, low and middle income groups and meet the target of “Housing for All” by 2022, with an aim to provide a decent pucca home. From the perspective of implementation, PMAY-U has four broad verticals — slum rehabilitation, affordable housing in partnership, subsidy for beneficiary-led individual house construction and credit-linked subsidy scheme — covering both demand-supply interventions.