PMAY house must be in name of a female member: Urban development minister

LUCKNOW: After pursuing the triple talaq bill aggressively in parliament, the BJP government, in yet another move to give the fair sex its due, has decided to make the ownership of a house under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) mandatory in the name of the female member of the family.

Confirming this, Union housing and urban development minister Hardeep Singh Puri said here on Wednesday that allotment of a house under PMAY will be subjected to entitlement in the name of a female family member only. “This would be another way to empower women,” he said. Puri said that the Centre had already given its approval for the construction of 37.5 lakh housing units under PMAY. Approvals were given to 5.5 lakh units in December 2017, he said.

The UP government, too, has proposed to construct around 12 lakh housing units under PMAY. Under the scheme, the Centre and the state government are to give a subsidy of Rs 3 lakh to buyers. The Union minister said that the land for the project would have to be provided by the state government while builders would construct the units.


As a matter of fact, UP government is also toying with the idea of giving incentives to builders in the form of waiving development and land use charges for constructing PMAY houses.

“The project gains importance given the enormous housing need of people,” Puri said, adding that the demand had witnessed a significant rise in the wake of large-scale migration of people. Puri said that the PMAY could also be a potential solution to large-scale illegal colonies which have been cropping up in the cities.