Only 16% houses built in four years of urban housing scheme under PMAY

Only a little over 16 per cent of houses sanctioned under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) have been completed in the four years that the scheme has been active. A total of one crore houses for the urban poor are supposed to be constructed by 2022 under the ambitious housing scheme. In the past three years, 54 lakh homes have been sanctioned by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs across all 29 states and 7 union territories, out of which only 8,84,464 homes have been completed so far. This amounts to 16.09 per cent of the sanctioned work.

Madhya Pradesh has emerged as the forerunner in the urban housing scheme with 1,33,663 homes built in the state, according to the data available on the PMAY website. It is followed by Gujarat, which has 1,20,766 homes constructed while Maharashtra comes a close third with 93,370 completed homes.

India Today sought information about the status of the project in two smart cities in the two western states - Maharashtra and Gujarat - through Right to Information (RTI) from Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs HFA - IV division.

In nine years of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) for the urban poor - in just four cities, Pune, Solapur, Ahmedabad and Surat - there were 1,03,692 homes sanctioned for the urban poor. A total of 95,207 homes were constructed in five years from 2009 to 2014 under this scheme. However, approximately 91.8 per cent of the sanctioned work was completed in nine years in these four cities.

Incidentally, these four cities were also among those that featured in the first round of the Smart City Mission of the Modi government from January 2016. Between 2015 and 2017, Rs 784 crore were given to these four cities by the central government under smart city projects for the betterment of these towns, including homes for the urban poor.

Post 2014, there were 2,55,451 homes sanctioned for the urban poor in these cities while there were 68,007 homes constructed in over four years. According to the government's documents, out of the houses completed after 2014, some were those that were incomplete houses of JNNURM. So far, in four and half years, which is half of the duration that JNNURM was in existence there is only 26.6 per cent of work that has been done under the PMAY in these four cities.

Between 2009 and 2014, cities in Maharashtra had only 18,341 homes constructed; the Gujarat cities had 76,866 homes constructed for the urban poor. And this trend continued post 2014 as well. After 2014, Pune and Solapur in Maharashtra had 76,539 houses that were sanctioned for the urban poor while Gujarat cities, Surat and Ahmedabad had 1,78,912 homes. The number of homes constructed in Pune and Solapur after 2014 have been 13,488 while Surat and Ahmedabad had more than double these homes constructed together totalling to 54,519 homes.