Govt clears 30K affordable houses for urban poor on private land

In a first-of-its kind of affordable housing project on private land, the government on Monday approved construction of 30,000 affordable houses for the urban poor in Maharashtra's Sholapur under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) programme, along with a central assistance of Rs 450 crore.

The decision was taken by an inter-ministerial central sanctioning and monitoring committee (CSMC), chaired by the secretary of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs Durga Shanker Mishra after talks with the Maharashtra Government, which is providing an assistance of Rs 300 crore.

According to senior officials, the Raynagar Cooperative Housing Federation of Sholapur had submitted a proposal to the state government to construct 30,000 affordable houses for its members, most of who work in the textile and beedi sector, as well as other urban poor at a cost of Rs 1,811 crore. All the beneficiaries have been linked by Aadhaar.

The Federation will implement an agency of the programme. It also owns 189 hectares of land for building the houses.

While the cost of each dwelling unit will be Rs 6.03 lakh, each house it wwill be sold at Rs 3.53 lakh. The State Level Sanctioning and Monitoring Committee (SLSMC), set up under PMAY (Urban) will oversee implementation of the project.

Construction of 2.84 lakh affordable houses for urban poor under PMAY(Urban) was also approved on Monday. The total cost of these houses to be built in six states is Rs 16,407 crore for which central assistance of Rs 4,272 crore has been approved.

While 2.25 lakh houses have been sanctioned for Andhra Pradesh, 23,322 houses have been approved for Uttar Pradesh. A total of 15,374 houses have been approved for Tamil Nadu, 10,392 for Manipur, 9,767 for Assam and 703 for Meghalaya.