New Delhi: The central government has provided Central Assistance of Rs 10,121 crore to Gujarat under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U). Under this scheme, so far over 110 lakh houses have been sanctioned in the country of which 7,68,809 are in Gujarat. The information was provided by the Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs, Shri Hardeep Singh Puri on March 17, 2021 in Rajya Sabha while replying to a question raised by Member of Parliament Shri Parimal Nathwani.

According to the statement of the minister, Central Assistance of Rs 1,78,076 crore, including Rs 14,182 crore for the state of Gujarat has been approved and Central Assistance of Rs 90,538 crore, including Rs 10,121 crore for Gujarat, has been released. Against the assessed/validated demand of 112 lakh houses under PMAY-U, over 110 lakh houses have been sanctioned so far, out of which 74.8 lakh houses have been grounded for construction including 43.3 lakh completed houses as per the response statement of the minister.

Shri Nathwani wanted to know the number of persons who received subsidy under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) so far in India, particularly in Gujarat. He wanted to know the total amount spent towards subsidy under PMAY (U) so far as well as to what percentage extent the mission is accomplished, and the bottlenecks faced in implementation of the Mission and the measures taken to overcome those bottlenecks.

The statement of the minister also said that local statutory compliances for construction, building plan/layout, environmental clearances, coastal area restrictions, defence clearances, arrangement of funds by beneficiaries, tendering process, provision of requisite infrastructure such as water supply, sewerage, approach roads before start of construction in projects, availability of construction material / labour, climate related hazards such as floods, water logging, incessant rain, extreme cold/hot weather, etc were the main bottlenecks.

Minister’s statement also said that to ensure uninterrupted flow of funds, in addition to budgetary resources, National Urban Housing Fund (NUHF) for Rs 60,000 crore has been created for raising Extra Budgetary Resources (EBR) in phases for rapid implementation of the scheme. Moreover, an ‘Affordable Housing Fund’ (AHF) with a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore has been created in National Housing Bank (NHB) using the Priority Sector Lending Shortfall in Banks/Financial Institutions to reduce interest burden on housing loans in Affordable housing segment. This was followed by a further allocation of Rs 10,000 crore in 2019-20 as per the statement of the minister.

According to the statement, Aadhaar validation of beneficiaries, funds transfer through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) mode, geo-tagging of projects and houses, social audit, third party quality monitoring, robust centralized Management Information System (MIS) and tools like CLSS Awas Portal (CLAP) and CLSS tracker are provisioned to ensure transparency and accountability.