LIDA approves affordable housing project under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna

Project entails investment of about Rs 350 cr, will be completed in next three years

Lucknow Industrial Development Authority (LIDA) has approved an affordable housing project, which seeks to complement the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna (PMAY) of the Central government.

Being developed by Parth Infrabuild, the project spanning 10 acres is coming up on the busy Lucknow-Kanpur highway. The project would comprise 817 and 460 units for the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) and Low Income Group (LIG) segments respectively and the beneficiaries would get the subsidy under the central scheme for the homeless urban poor dwellers.

The project would entail investment of about Rs 350 crore, including land, and would be completed in the next three years, company's chairman and managing director P N Mishra said on Tuesday.

LIDA, conceptualised in 2005 as an industrial corridor between Lucknow and Kanpur, to act as counter-magnet to Noida and Greater Noida in central Uttar Pradesh for attracting investment and boosting industrialisation. However, it has largely been a laggard through the successive regimes due to apathy and land acquisition hurdles.

"UP is facing shortfall of over 2 million housing units and there is an urgent need to spruce up the availability of low cost and affordable housing in the state to meet the growing demand, " Mishra later told Business Standard.

In the backdrop of the BJP ruling both in UP and the Centre, he expressed confidence there would be greater synergies between the two regimes and the irritants would be resolved at the earliest.