Rural housing plan likely to get Rs 28,000-crore booster infusion

The Centre is looking to allocate an additional Rs 28,000 crore for the flagship rural housing programme, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana–Gramin (PMAY-G), this fiscal year to ensure completion of the targeted dwellings before the next general election in 2024.

The injection of the additional fund is also important because of increased demand from states for more money for the scheme.

This fund infusion would be over and above Rs 20,000 crore that had been allocated for PMAY-G in the Budget of 2022-23.

Of the required Rs 28,000 crore extra, around Rs 13,000 crore was approved a few weeks ago; a demand for the remaining amount has been placed and is believed to be under process, a senior government official said.

According to sources, of the 29.5 million rural houses scheduled to be completed by March 2024, around 20.6 million have already been constructed; the remaining 8.9 million houses will be completed in the coming months.

In FY23, the government has targeted to complete around 5.3 million rural houses. In FY22, the official data shows, the Centre targeted to build around 6.1 million rural houses, of which over 4.3 million got completed within that financial year. Under the rural housing programme, financial assistance of Rs 1.20 lakh in plains is provided to each identified beneficiary; a sum of Rs 1.30 lakh is provided if the beneficiary is from a hilly state. 

According to the scheme’s guidelines, the financial burden of the implementation is shared between the Centre and states at a ratio of 60:40 in the plains, and 90:10 in hilly and special category states.

The Centre is implementing the PMAY-G from April 1, 2016, to realise Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of 'Housing for All' by 2022.

Under this, 10 million pucca houses were to be constructed in rural areas by March 2019.

“Training of rural masons, development of locally appropriate house design typologies, and dedicated structure for monitoring at various levels led to quality and timely completion of houses,” official documents show.

Thereafter, the Union Cabinet considered building another 19.5 million houses under the PMAY-G.

The construction of 10 million houses was targeted from 2016-17 to 2018-19 in the first phase.

Another 19.5 million households were to be covered in the next three years (i.e. 2019-20 to 2021-22) with a financial implication to the central government of Rs 1,56,634 crore.

Some of the completion deadlines got extended due to Covid-19, officials said. Recently, the Centre allocated Rs 8,200 crore for West Bengal for the rural housing scheme.