All about Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana | PMAY

In a country like India, where the population is growing at an increasing rate, the need for housing facilities has increased. Many people in urban areas are not able to afford a good housing facility due to the high cost of constructing a house. So, the government has introduced Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana in 2005 so that affordable housing facilities can be provided to urban poor people.

Points covered in this article are

It is a Government initiative to build houses at affordable prices to the people in urban areas who cannot afford it. This was introduced on 25th June 2015. It includes 2 categories in the scheme, urban poor and rural poor. Pradhan Mantri Shahari Awas Yojana for urban poor and Pradhan Mantri Gramin Awas Yojana for rural poor

This scheme aims at providing affordable housing facilities for weaker sections of the society by providing subsidies on home loan interest of up to 6.5%. It was introduced with the objective of slum redevelopment or rehabilitation. On an average gross amount of Rs. 100,000 per house shall be provided for families under Below Poverty Line

● Government shall provide 6.5% interest subsidy for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and Low-Income Groups (LIG)

● Interest subsidy of 3 to 4% to Middle Income Group

● This interest on subsidy shall be provided for 20 years from date of the loan

● An economically friendly technology will be adopted while constructing houses under this scheme

● Ground floors of the housing facility shall be reserved for senior citizens or differently abled citizens

From the date of introduction, three phases of PMAY were decided

There are certain conditions to be met in order to avail the benefits of Pradhan Mantri Shahari Awas Yojana. They are

● The houses under the scheme can be owned only females or jointly with males

● The income limit under the scheme is- family income per annum should be less than Rs. 3 lakhs for EWS, less than Rs. 6 lakhs per annum for LIG, between Rs. 6 lakhs to 12 lakhs for MIG people

● The beneficiary of the house must be aged below 70 years of age

● The beneficiary or her family should not own any dwelling unit

● The beneficiary family should not own any other property in their name or any other family members name

● While availing loan under PMAY, no other subsidy should be taken under other central and state government housing schemes

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development has set up a quite easy application process for PMAY. Steps to make an application under this mission is

1. Log on to Official page of Pradhan Mantri Shahari Awas Yojana at http://pmaymis.gov.in/

2. Enter the category under which application is to be made- EWS, LIG or Middle Income Group

3. In the next step, verify the Aadhar details

4. When the Aadhar verification is done, personal details such as name, total number of people in the family, head of the family, address and other details are to be submitted

After successful submission of application, registration is completed.

All statutory towns as per Census 2011 and towns notified subsequently would be eligible for coverage under the Mission. The mission will support construction of houses upto 30 square meter carpet area with a basic civic infrastructure. Slum redevelopment projects and Affordable Housing projects in partnership should have basic civic infrastructure like water, sanitation, sewerage, road, electricity etc. ULB should ensure that individual houses under credit linked interest subsidy and beneficiary led construction should have provision for these basic civic services

So far, a total of 60 lakh houses are in various stages of construction out of which, up to 32 lakh houses have been completed. Compared to the earlier housing schemes, PMAY (U) has achieved 10 times more in a span of 4.5 years, whereas the earlier schemes had taken about 10 years to achieve a significantly less number of coverage. The houses sanctioned so far under the Mission involve an investment of about Rs. 6.13 lakh crore with Central Assistance of Rs. 1.63 lakh crore.

Mission will be monitored at three levels: City, State and Central Government. Central Sanctioning and Monitoring Committee (CSMC) monitors formulation of Annual Implementation Plans (AIPs) and project implementation. Suitable monitoring mechanisms shall be developed by the Mission. States and cities will also be required to develop monitoring mechanisms for monitoring the progress of missions and its different components.

The housing scheme is facing challenges in recent times to meet its targets due to the reluctance of banks and NBFCs (non banking financial institutions) in fulfilling the requests from the ministry for assistance for more funds to process claims. The major factors because of which subsidy claims are moving at a very slow pace is because of the financial issues. But the government is taking steps to increase the houses completed and meet the set objectives.