This was disclosed by rural areas and employment minister K Yerrannaidu in the first meeting yesterday of the reconstituted parliamentary consultative committee attached to his ministry. He said that since the Centre was giving 80 per cent of the funds for the scheme, it wanted its implementation to be transparent.
Yerrannaidu said he hoped that regular monitoring of the feedback from the states will ensure that the intended beneficiaries derive full benefit from the scheme. He stressed on quality in construction. There was no room for middlemen in this, he said.
The minister informed the members that Rs 1,424.2 crore had been allocated in 1996-97 for construction of over 1,123,000 houses all over the country. Till June last, over 1 lakh houses had been constructed at a cost of Rs 709.64 crore. Since last year, the benefits of the IAY had been extended to the families of members of the armed forces and para-military forces who were killed in action.
The IAY was now an independent scheme, delinked from the Jawahar Rojgar Yojna which was basically an employment-generation programme.
Keeping in view the projected population growth, the total housing shortage by the year 2000 was estimated at 22.68 million units, the minister said. Up to March last, about 5.6 million houses had been constructed, leaving a net housing shortage of 17 million units. This included 10.3 million houses which needed to be upgraded.
Yerrannaidu said his ministry had drawn up an action-plan to provide houses to all the homeless rural poor in the country by the turn of the century. This will require Rs 24,303 crore. The ministry had asked the Planning Commission and the finance ministry to provide the necessary funds for this purpose.