‘Housing for all’ scheme gets Prime Minister’s nod

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday gave green signal to the Ministry of Housing and Poverty Alleviation’s flagship scheme ‘housing for all by 2022’.

The Ministry can now go to the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) after incorporating suggestions of the Prime Minister’s Office.

Two crore houses

The meeting, chaired by Modi, was attended by Minister for Urban Development M Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of State for Urban Development Babul Supriyo and senior officials. The programme proposes to build two crore houses across the nation by 2022. This would cover both slum housing and affordable housing for weaker sections, according to a statement from the PMO. It will cover urban poor living in slums, urban homeless and new migrants to urban areas in search of shelter. It would cover metros, small towns and all urban areas.

It would begin with a baseline survey to assess the demand for such housing and identify resource requirements.

Demand assessment

About 6 lakh houses need to be built in Delhi, 16 lakh in Mumbai, 4 lakh in Chennai and 4 lakh in Kolkata. The target of 2 crore houses may go up after demand assessment through baseline survey.

The Prime Minister said that the first priority under the new scheme should be on towns and cities along the banks of the Ganga and its tributaries.

A large portion of the programme is to be financed in a public-private partnership mode by leveraging land and other resources in urban areas, the statement added.