More than half of the 1,397 beneficiaries identified by the city Corporation for the first phase of the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (PMAY) have not yet responded to the local body’s call to sign agreements and collect the first instalment. With August 16 set as the deadline to sign the agreement, around 700 beneficiaries stand to lose the scheme’s benefits.
The Corporation had issued a call to the beneficiaries to sign the agreement, in March. The officials in the housing wing are perplexed at the lack of response from beneficiaries, who had themselves applied for the scheme. They were chosen from 16,000 applications received in the first phase. One of the reasons that the officials have found is that some of the applicants have their lands close to the coast, and thus construction activity here would count as Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) violation.
“There could be 150 such cases of land coming under CRZ stipulations. Then there are a few cases of conversion of paddy land or wetland. We had sent individual letters to the beneficiaries. The lists were given to the councillors too. According to them, some of them had not got building permits. But still, the number of people who have not responded is quite large,” says an official. The requirement for beneficiary contribution could be another reason. Each beneficiary gets ₹2.5 lakh, to which the beneficiary contribution of ₹50,000 is added. The first instalment is of ₹30,000, to which the beneficiary adds ₹5,000. “There could be cases where they might not have enough money to contribute. The total amount that the beneficiary gets is insufficient to construct a house these days,” says councillor Palayam Rajan.
The Detailed Project Report for the second phase has been prepared, with 1,800 beneficiaries chosen for it.
