Centre aims completion of 80 lakh more houses

New Delhi, Feb. 1: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday announced allocation of whopping Rs 48,000 crore for completion of 80 lakh houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), both rural and urban, during the next fiscal year.

In her budget speech, the minister said: “In 2022-23, 80 lakh houses will be completed for the identified eligible beneficiaries of PM Awas Yojana, both rural and urban. Rs 48,000 crore is allocated for this purpose.”

The Centre would work with states for reduction of time required for all land and construction related approvals, for promoting affordable housing for middle-class and economically weaker sections (EWS) in urban areas, she said.

“We shall also work with the financial sector regulators to expand access to capital along with reduction in cost of intermediation,” the minister said.

For better land records management, Ms Sitharaman said the states will be encouraged to adopt Unique Land Parcel Identification Number to facilitate IT-based management of records.

“The facility for transliteration of land records across any of the Schedule VIII languages will also be rolled out,” she said.

The adoption or linkage with National Generic Document Registration System (NGDRS) with the ‘One-Nation OneRegistration Software’ will be promoted as an option for uniform process for registration and ‘anywhere registration’ of deeds and documents.

On Monday, the Economy Survey highlighted that 33.99 lakh houses were completed in 2020-21 and 26.20 lakh units as on November 25, 2021 under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Gramin (PMAY-G) programme. For the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Urban (PMAY-U), the survey noted that 14.56 lakh houses were completed in FY21. In 2021-22, 4.49 lakh houses were completed till December 2021. —