North-eastern states lag in PMAY-G with house completion rate just over 50%

Arunachal Pradesh had lowest completion rate of 12%; House completion rates under the scheme are higher for minorities and the physically disabled

On Friday, prime minister Narendra Modi announced that 30 million pucca houses had been completed under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana for the poor, of which 25.3 million homes were constructed under the rural and another six million under the urban scheme.

A week ago, the minister of the state of rural development ministry informed the Parliament that of the 22.9 million sanctioned houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin (PMAY-G) scheme, 17.7 million or 77.4 per cent had been completed until March 31, 2022.

The ministry website shows that eight million were completed under the Indira Awas Yojana—an older housing scheme—taking the total houses constructed for the rural segment (including PMAY-G) to 25 million.

A Business Standard analysis found that while the country-wide completion rate was over 77 per cent, the scheme has not picked up in the country's north-eastern states. In the eight north-eastern states, the completion rate was just a little over 50 per cent. Of the 1.17 million houses sanctioned for the region, 588,903 were constructed.

Among these, Arunachal Pradesh had the lowest completion rate of 12 per cent.

The completion rate is calculated by dividing the number of constructed houses from the number of sanctioned houses under the scheme.

While Uttar Pradesh was the best-performing state under PMAY-G, with a 96.9 per cent completion rate, Bihar and Assam had completion rates of 66 and 60 per cent, respectively. Thirteen of the 32 states/UTs had less than 60 per cent completion. Among these, the prominent ones were Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Jammu Kashmir.
 

While the prime minister hailed the scheme for its women empowerment credentials, a Business Standard analysis finds that the completion rates for minorities and physically disabled categories were higher throughout the country. The completion rate among minorities was 79.6 per cent, whereas the completion rate of PwD candidates was 82.1 per cent.

A state-wise division shows that half of the 30 states/UTs for which data was available had a lower completion rate for minority houses than the state’s average.

In Assam, for instance, the completion rate of houses for minorities was 39.9 per cent against a 60.4 completion rate for the state. In West Bengal and Gujarat, too completion rate of minorities was lower. But for Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, the completion rate for minorities was higher than the state average. Kerala also had a higher completion rate for minorities.

Only three of the 29 states/UTs had achieved a 100 per cent completion for physically disabled categories.