The Centre, along with the State government, will make efforts to remove slums from 25 cities in Maharashtra having more than a lakh population. As the first step in this direction, Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) scheme of the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation was launched in Mumbai on Tuesday.
Under the scheme, slum rehabilitation will be carried out in the cities with equal funding from the Centre and the State government. The money provided by the Centre will be in the form of viability gap funding for the projects.
The scheme has been planned along the lines of Jawaharlal National Urban Renewal Mission for urban upliftment. The State government will get funds from the Centre but it is subject to certain conditions such as undertaking reforms for enactment of special laws, which will give property rights to the poor as well as reforms in housing policy. For the city of Mumbai, where almost 60 per cent of the population stays in slums, the State government already has a 20-year-old slum rehabilitation scheme, which is managed by the Slum Rehabilitation Authority. How both these schemes will be implemented simultaneously in the city is yet to be seen.
Addressing the media, Ms Kumari Selja, Union Minister for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, said that there is a shortage of 6.53 million dwelling units in the country, of which Maharashtra alone accounts for 3.72 million. The State government alone cannot undertake this task; it will require help from the private sector.
Asked about the amount of money committed for the RAY scheme by the Centre and the targets it has set, Ms Selja was non-committal. She merely said that “funding would not be a problem for schemes like RAY but it needs to be first implemented properly in Maharashtra.”