Over 1 Lakh Houses Under PMAY-G Diverted to UP After 24 States and UTs Fail to Sanction Them

New Delhi: The Union government has withdrawn the allocation of 1.44 lakh houses from nearly 24 states and Union Territories which missed the deadline to sanction them and allocated them to Uttar Pradesh which had sought additional resources, the Indian Express reported.

According to the report, the Ministry of Rural Development, which is in charge of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin (PMAY-G) scheme, has conveyed this to the states and UTs where the allocation of houses has been revised downwards, the report said.

The Union government has set a target of constructing 2.95 crore houses under the PMAY-G scheme ahead of the Lok Sabha elections by March 2024.

2.04 crore houses from the total were allocated to states based on the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) data. The remaining 91 lakh houses were allocated based on a survey called Awaas+ conducted by the government in January, 2018 to March, 2019 to identify those beneficiaries which claimed to have been left out under the 2011 SECC.

Also read: Six Years On And Despite The Praise, The PM Awas Yojana Is Still Riddled With Faults

However, two dozen states and UTs together failed to sanction a total of 1,44,220 houses – 7,496 from SECC data and 1,36,724 from the Awaas+ list – before the deadline of June 30, the Indian Express report said.

These states and UTs are: Gujarat, Tripura, Odisha, Sikkim, Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram, Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Ladakh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Jharkhand, Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Andhra Pradesh.

On the other hand, Uttar Pradesh, which was initially allocated 34.72 lakh houses, had sought the government's approval for additional houses. The state’s deputy chief minister, Keshav Prasad Maurya, who holds the rural development portfolio, had written to Union rural development minister Giriraj Singh.

While confirming receipt of a letter from the Union government regarding the additional allocation, Maurya has said that Uttar Pradesh would need 95,000 more houses to ensure housing for all eligible beneficiaries.

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