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Laying the foundation stone for six projects under the Global Housing Technology Challenge-India being taken up in six States, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said these will give a “new direction to housing construction.”
The projects involve building 1,000 houses - light houses - in each city using modern technology for cost effectiveness and speed of construction. They are being constructed at Indore, Rajkot, Chennai, Ranchi, Agartala and Lucknow.
‘Scope for innovation’
He said the project has given a scope to innovate and incubate with new technology.
Participation of States from northern, eastern, western and southern parts of the country in this campaign “is strengthening the feeling of our cooperative federalism further,” Modi said.
Speaking at the event organised virtually, Modi said housing for the poor and the middle class has been a priority for the government.
Construction sector acts as a force multiplier for the economy, he noted and added that his government has taken a number of steps to boost the real estate sector and will continue to do so.
Each project will serve as incubation centres, he said, urging architects, planners, engineers and students to visit these projects. He said today, the country has chosen a different approach, adopting a different route and a better technology to complete the projects faster.
Novel technologies
He expressed happiness on the active participation of more than 50 innovative construction companies from around the world. He said this global challenge has given us a scope to innovate and incubate with new technology. Talking about new technologies being adopted for the six Light House Projects, he said that for example, the project in Indore will not have brick and mortar walls, instead they will use the prefabricated sandwich panel system.
The light houses in Rajkot will be built using french technology and have monolithic concrete construction technology using tunnel and the house will be more capable of withstanding disasters, he said.
In Chennai, US and Finland technologies will use the precast concrete system, which will construct the house faster and cheaper. In Ranchi, houses will be built using Germany’s 3D construction system. Each room will be made separately and then the entire structure will be put together.
The Prime Minister also announced winners under the Affordable Sustainable Housing Accelerators - India (ASHA-India) and gave out annual awards for excellence in implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U) Mission.
During the event, he also released a certificate course on innovative construction technologies named ‘’NAVARITIH’’ (New, Affordable, Validated, Research Innovation Technologies for Indian Housing) and a compendium of 54 innovative housing construction technologies identified through GHTC-India.
Besides the Prime Minister, the Housing and Urban Affairs Minister, Chief Ministers of Tripura, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh were present on the occasion.
The Light House Projects (LHPs) showcase the best of new-age alternative global technologies, materials and processes in the construction sector for the first time in the country at such a large scale, the government has said.GHTC-India envisages an ecosystem for adoption of innovative technologies in the housing construction sector in a holistic manner.
Talking about its benefits for the middle classes, Modi said they are getting rebates on home loan interest. The Prime Minister also recounted the measures taken recently to help the real estate sector.
Real estate sector
Measures like reduction of tax on cheap houses from 8 to 1 percent, GST reduction from 12 to 5 per cent, recognising the sector as infrastructure for making it eligible for cheap loans have taken country’s ranking for construction permit from 185 to 27, he said, adding that procedure for construction permissions have been taken online in more than 2,000 towns.
He also said that more than two crore housing units have been constructed in rural India and effort will be on to accelerate the speed of rural housing this year.
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