Centre unhappy with Telangana govt ignoring PM’s housing target

Centre unhappy with Telangana govt ignoring PM’s housing target
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The Centre may ask the state government to return the funds granted for construction of houses for the poor under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana with the state failing to achieve targets as per the schedule. This has been conveyed to the officials of the state government at a review on implementation of schemes being taken up by the Centre. 

Hyderabad: The Centre may ask the state government to return the funds granted for construction of houses for the poor under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana with the state failing to achieve targets as per the schedule. This has been conveyed to the officials of the state government at a review on implementation of schemes being taken up by the Centre.

The state’s officials have been told to implement the scheme or refund the grants, according to official sources. The officials of the Union Rural Development department observed that the state government did not report any sanction under the PMAY to AwaasSoft website of the Centre being opened to monitor the implementation of the scheme.

The state has been given a target of construction of 70,764 units during 2016-17 and 2017-18. The officials said that the state did not finalise list of beneficiaries after the verification by Gram Sabhas and proceedings were not updated on AwaasSoft. No data related to activities like registration of beneficiaries, geo-tagging, sanctioning, transfer of funds to beneficiary and inspection has been provided to the Centre.

Though an amount of Rs 190 crore has been released to the state as first installment of Central assistance for 2016-17 no progress has been seen on AwaasSoft. “Due to this, the Ministry may be constrained to request the state to return the money released,” an official said. The RD officials of the Union Government observed that of the 7,907 villages which are eligible for the scheme, 5,339 have been mapped.

Though the state government was supposed to finalise the permanent wait list through the Gram Sabhas, no action was taken by January 15, the last date for completing this process. While the state was supposed to complete construction of 25,000 houses by March 2018, no progress has taken place in this regard. It did not identify the lands for the landless under PMAY.

As far as training to masons was concerned the state government has imparted skills to 584 masons of the target of 1,514. The state is yet to train, assess and give certificates to about 1,000 rural masons. Aadhaar seeding with the details of the beneficiaries was not taken up and the state government has not provided any documents on opening balance, central and state share and details of total availability of funds.

“The state government did not furnish any report on the number of houses being sanctioned to SCs and STs. It has not included house design typologies in its report and data was not provided on convergence of PMAY with Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme,” the official said.

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