Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna - An Affordable Housing Scheme of Indian Government

by Rajesh Kumar Free

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched a new mission for the development of affordable houses for urban poor and homeless. The new mission is named as “Housing for All by 2022” under which the government has aimed to construct 2 Crore affordable houses by the year 2022. The mission is also named as Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna.

The government is planning to provide affordable housing to urban poor, urban homeless, metros, small towns & new migrants to urban area. The government aims to construct approx 2 Crore affordable houses for EWS & LIG Categories in the next 7 years while the exact number of houses required would be depend on the demand survey to be undertaken by all states/cities relevant authorities.

The detailed demand survey for accessing the requirement of housing units will be conducted by integrating Aadhar Numbers, Jan Dhan Yojna account number or other such valid identification.

The Yojna will be beneficial for EWS (Economical Weaker Section) & LIG (Lower Income Group) of the society. Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna will cover the all urban areas consisting of 4041 statuary towns & the construction of houses in these areas will be done in three phases. In the first phase, the mission will cover the 100 cities which will be selected by state governments. The first phase of the scheme to be taken place between April 2015 and March 2017. The second phase will start from April 2017 and continue till March 2019. In this phase, the mission will cover additional 200 cities. The last & final phase of the mission will cover all the remaining cities, which will took place April 2019 and March 2022.

Under the mission, the government will provide the subsidy to all home loans. From the first phase, the Credit Linked Interest Subsidy component of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna would be implemented across the country in all statutory towns. The Central Government will provide a subsidy of Rs. 1 lakh to Rs. 2.30 lakh to buy a home. The Mission will be more beneficial for Women, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and economically weaker section of the society.

Under the Credit Linked Subsidy component, the government will provide loan at the interest rate of 6.5 percent on each housing loans available upto tenure of 15 years by EWS/LIG categories. According to the revised rates of interest, the home loan EMI many come down by a good amount. Today the home loan is available at the interest rate of 10.50 percent which will be taken down by a good margin to 6.5% for all eligible applicants.