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Budget 2019: 1.53 Crore Houses Delivered Under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, Says Goyal

Number of houses constructed increases five times compared to Indira Awas Yojana, says Goyal.

A house constructed under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin. Image used for representational purposes.
A house constructed under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin. Image used for representational purposes.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Housing For All’ scheme delivered 1.53 lakh homes to the poor between 2014 and 2018, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal said in his budget speech in Parliament.

This, he said, is five times the number of houses constructed under the erstwhile housing scheme—Indira Awas Yojana.

The government aimed to deliver one crore houses to the rural poor by March 2019 in the first phase of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin, launched on Nov. 20, 2016. While allocation under this scheme has more than doubled since 2015-16 to nearly Rs 25,000 crore in 2017-18, the project completion rate has declined from the peak of 75 percent in 2016-17 to 56 percent in 2018-19.

The number of houses completed, however, were about 16.6 percent higher under Modi’s revamped scheme between fiscal years 2016-2019, compared with previous three years—between fiscal years 2014-2016—under Indira Awas Yojana. That may also be because data on completed houses include backlog of previous years, according to a 2017 report of the 16th parliamentary standing committee on rural development.

For the urban poor, the government targeted completion of 1.2 crore houses by March 31, 2022 under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban, launched in June 2015.

By January this year, nearly 69 lakh houses were approved under the urban housing scheme. Of these, 20 percent were completed at 13.59 lakh houses and 13.24 lakh houses were occupied by the beneficiaries. Even as construction had begun for 37 lakh houses, nearly 18 lakh approved houses were yet to be completed.