NITI Aayog okays revamp of Indira Awaas Yojana

NEW DELHI: The government’s think tank NITI Aayog has approved a proposal to restructure the decades old rural housing scheme Indira Awaas Yojana to provide houses to 2.95 crore people over the next seven years at an estimated cost of Rs 2.5 lakh crore, drawn entirely from the Union budget. This paves the way for achieving the Narendra Modi government’s goal of providing housing for all by 2022, officials said.

The nod to the proposal, approved by the project appraisal and management division under NITI Aayog, is likely to be followed by renaming of the scheme to The National Mission for Rural Housing, officials said.

EThad in July last year reported that the rural development ministry was reworking the scheme to align it with the Modi-led NDA government’s vision. The scheme, which has also been approved by the expenditure finance committee, will now go to the Cabinet for consideration. “The scheme is likely to be approved in two months at most, after which the ministry will declare the list of eligible beneficiaries under the scheme based on the Socio Economic and Caste Census,” said a senior government official.

According to the official, who did not wish to be identified, the scheme will be funded entirely through the Union budget and the ministry is in the process of making systematic changes to ensure that the money reaches the beneficiaries on time.

The centrally sponsored Indira Awaas Yojana was funded by the Centre and states in 75:25 proportion in the plains while the cost was shared in 90:10 proportion in hilly or difficult terrains.

The Cabinet in June gave the goahead to the National Mission for Urban Housing and once the rural scheme is approved, the programme will be implemented on a mission mode to achieve the robust targets. Launched in 1985, Indira Awaas Yojana has provided houses to 3.25 crore rural families at a cumulative expenditure of about Rs 1 lakh crore. The proposed changes include increasing the size of the houses from 20 sq mt to 25 sq mt, making toilets a mandatory part of the house, increasing the cost per unit fromRs 75,000 to Rs 1.2 lakh per unit and doing away with the standard block design of houses under the previous scheme. “Under the new scheme the ministry has proposed to encourage local design for houses suiting the geographical conditions and made out of locally available material in place of standard block houses under IAY,” the official said. The government plans to set up an autonomous registered society to implement and monitor the scheme, and tap into institutional or sovereign overseas funding to implement the project in mission mode.