Vacant houses: Puri raises issue of allotment

Leaving completed houses unalloted to eligible beneficiaries or keeping the houses incomplete is a waste of resources Hardeep Singh Puri

Pointing out that leaving completed houses unalloted was a waste of resources, Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri has requested chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to intervene in the matter of vacant houses in Delhi and get an action plan prepared to allot them to the poor.

In a letter to the Delhi CM recently, Mr Puri had said that all- out efforts were being made to provide houses to all poor in urban areas and so, “leaving completed houses unalloted to eligible beneficiaries or keeping the houses incomplete is a waste of resources”.

He noted that the housing and urban affairs secretary had earlier written to the Delhi chief secretary, requesting for an action plan for utilising all completed/ incomplete and unoccupied houses constructed under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission ( JNNURM) by March 31, 2018. However, a response is awaited, Mr Puri said.

“Since no progress has been made in this regard so far, I would request your personal intervention to get an action plan prepared to complete and allot the houses constructed under JNNURM to eligible beneficiaries under that scheme or Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana ( Urban),” Mr Puri added.

JNNURM was a massive city- modernisation scheme launched by the

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, Union minister

previous UPA government in 2005. However, it was replaced by the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation after the NDA government came to power in 2014. Mr Puri also referred to a media report that said nearly 26,000 flats built for the poor remained vacant in the absence of a uniform rehabilitation policy in Delhi.

“I’m informed that vacant houses mentioned in the report pertain to the houses built under the scheme of Basic Services to Urban Poor ( BSUP) of JNNURM in Delhi.

“I’ve been informed that 16 BSUP projects involving the Central assistance of ` 1163.04 crore for construction of 55,424 houses were sanctioned for Delhi under JNNURM,” Mr Puri said.

Out of these, 31,424 have been constructed and only 2,201 houses have been allotted, he said.