NEW DELHI: Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY) is set for a final burial in March 2017, but the Congress can draw consolation from the fact that the rural housing scheme bearing the name of the former PM will run parallel to Narendra Modi’s Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (PMAY) in its final six months.
The Union rural development ministry is set to launch the rural PMAY in October. Even so, it has told states that under-construction houses under IAY should be completed in the current financial year. Bearing Modi’s imprint, PMAY will subsume IAY, which has been the byword for subsidised housing for rural poor since it was launched in 1985.
PMAY, through which the government aims to build one crore houses by 2019, will be a targeted subsidy programme.The rural development ministry has identified beneficiary households through the "socio-economic caste census" -picking those who live in houses described as "single kutcha room, kutcha roof " and "double kutcha room, kutcha roof".
Many saw the IAY revamp, announced at the start of the BJP ad ministration, as a saffron design to purge the key poor outreach of Indira Gandhi’s name, coming as it did with the renaming of several other government schemes bearing the names of Nehru-Gandhi family members.
However, the Centre has rebuffed the charges, saying the new version of the rural housing scheme has enhanced grants and better procedures and cannot be dubbed a political ploy. But between launching PMAY and winding up IAY, the Centre is saddled with 38 lakh incomplete houses
sanctioned under the old scheme.
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