PMAY Urban: Plan is concrete, but implementation hits a wall

The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) Urban, the Centre’s flagship mission to address the housing shortage among the urban poor by ensuring a pucca house to all eligible households by 2022, has now completed five years. While implementation falls short of expectation nationwide, a few States have shown good progress.

Out of 1.08 crore houses sanctioned under the scheme, 66.86 lakh houses, or 62 per cent of the sanctioned number, have been grounded (grounding is the starting of construction), but only 38.15 lakh (35 per cent) have been completed. This includes incomplete houses under the National Urban Renewal Mission (NURM) launched by the Congress-led government in 2005.

The data on the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs website show that Goa, Kerala, Telangana and Gujarat have completed the construction of more than 60 per cent of the sanctioned houses. Rajasthan has completed 50 per cent.

Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland and Haryana, along with Mizoram and Manipur, are among the States that have not even reached 20 per cent of the completion target.

Uttar Pradesh has achieved 36 per cent of its target while Punjab has achieved 32 per cent. For Maharashtra and Karnataka, it stands at 30 per cent and for Bihar, 21 per cent.

Andhra Pradesh, with over 20.21 lakh sanctioned houses, tops the chart in terms of sanctioned houses; but it has completed just 17 per cent in terms of construction. Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh are other States that have a high number of sanctioned houses. These, however, have not completed construction of even 45 per cent.

Assistance sanctioned

The Centre has sanctioned assistance of ₹1.72-lakh crore to the States for this ambitious programme, of which it has released ₹76,327 crore as of November 2, 2020. The total investment envisaged for the project is ₹6.52-lakh crore.

About 15.03 lakh houses are being constructed using new technologies. In 2020, around 586.05 lakh tonnes of cement and 140.36 lakh tonnes of steel were used in the grounding work.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently announced 12 key measures as part of the government’s Atmanirbhar Bharat 3.0. As one of the measures, she announced ₹18,000 crore for PMAY-Urban over and above the ₹8,000 crore already allocated this year.

Multiplier effect

The government estimates that this will help start 12 lakh houses and complete 18 lakh houses, create 78 lakh additional jobs and improve production and sale of steel and cement, leaving a multiplier effect on the economy.