One million houses to be built by Center in a year
NEW DELHI: Within the next one year, the Center with its eyes possibly fixed on the forthcoming general elections, has set a formidable target of constructing over one million houses for the urban poor under various centrally sponsored schemes.
During the recent inauguration of a workshop on national symposium on affordable housing scheme the Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister – Girija Vyas declared that over the period of the next four years more than 2 million houses would be constructed out of which one million houses would be built within the span of the next one year.
According to the minister, some of the already existing schemes which would include Rajiv Rinn Yojana and Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) would soon be modified to make them even more people-friendly as well as to expedite the process of constructing these houses and ultimately reach out to more beneficiaries.
Furthermore, the ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation has also proposed to liberalize norms pertaining to affordable housing, as well as enabling families having an annual gross income of Rs 1 lakh to be eligible and qualify for housing under the category of economically weaker section (EWS). In the meantime, families falling within the income level of upto Rs 2 lakh per year would be eligible and qualify for housing under the category of lower income group (LIG).
Requesting private developers to unite their efforts with that of the government towards the construction of greater number of houses built for the poor, the ministry claimed the availability of approximately Rs 35,000 crore for the same purpose. Additionally, the ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation would also be sending a written petition to the ministry of Finance seeking infrastructure status for the sector of housing which would qualify buildings to receive benefits like tax exemptions among others. The earlier task force lead by the secretary of Housing Ministry – A K Mishra had also recommended that the segment should be granted infrastructure status.
The Minister assured that the task force’s suggestions, whose recommendations comprised the preparation of an inventory of land holdings by cities and states, bringing down timelines for affordable housing projects and increase floor space index (FSI) along with facilitating transferable development rights (TDR).
As per national statistics collected and collated by the Government of India, the total housing shortage within the country has been approximated at around 18.78 million units, of these 96 percent shortage were either in the EWS or LIG categories.
