Affordable housing needs easy land acquisition: Naidu

Union minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said on Wednesday that affordable housing needs land acquisition and this was one of the objectives of amendments proposed by the central government to the Land Acquisition Act of 2013.

"An investment of about Rs. three lakh crore is required to meet the housing shortage in urban areas and the new 'housing for all' scheme has been formulated to create an enabling environment based on the experiences of implementation of earlier housing schemes," Naidu, the urban development minister, said in an official statement.

The minister was addressing the concerns voiced by the members of a parliamentary consultative committee at its meeting.

Acknowledging that building two crore new houses in urban areas is a challenging task, Naidu said that several measures have been taken to enable mobilization of required resources by the states and urban local bodies.

"Affordable housing in rural and urban areas needs land acquisition and this was one of the objectives of amendments proposed by the central government to the Land Acquisition Act of 2013," Naidu said.

In the meeting, MPs discussed various implementation issues relating to construction of two crore houses for the urban poor by the year 2022.

"Naidu informed the MPs that it has already been decided to support the housing projects sanctioned under JNNURM till March, 2017 and the incomplete projects of Rajiv Awas Yojana have been subsumed in the housing for all scheme," said the statement.

Members of the committee had urged the government to continue to support the housing projects sanctioned under earlier housing schemes and remained incomplete.

The land bill is currently with a Joint Committee of Parliament for detailed discussion on the provisions of the controversial legislation after strong criticism from opposition parties including the Congress.