Under PMAY UP's Housing Record has reached 93 % in the last 5 Years

Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated twice in the last week that people had become "lakhpatis" after receiving residences through the PM Awas Yojana. The message will not go unnoticed in Uttar Pradesh, where the Bharatiya Janata Party believes the housing initiative, like the free cylinders programme PM Ujjwala Yojana, might be a major changer in the state's assembly elections.

Consider this: Uttar Pradesh has completed 93 percent of its allocated target of building houses for the poor in the state, placing it first in the country. UP has now finished the construction of 24.3 lakh residences out of a total target of almost 26 lakh, with the highest completion rate in the country of over 93 percent. West Bengal is the only state that comes close to this record, with a roughly 82 percent completion rate despite having built over 31 lakh dwellings out of a target of 38 lakh.

What's significant for the BJP is that the Yogi Adityanath administration made all of the progress in Uttar Pradesh on this project in the last five years, while the Samajwadi Party government was focused on its own state programme, the Lohia Gramin Awas Yojana. Modi had stated that Rs 18,000 crore sent to UP for the PM Awas Yojana during the SP rule went unused. To date, Uttar Pradesh has remitted about Rs 31,000 crore to beneficiaries as part of the scheme's national and state contributions. For the construction of a house, each beneficiary receives between Rs 1.2 lakh to Rs 1.3 lakh.

The government distributes cash to the recipients of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) for the construction of a house through a central and state share. Beneficiaries receive help in construction-related instalments straight into their bank accounts using the Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS) or Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT). A geo-referenced and time-stamped snapshot of the structure, as well as the beneficiary, is taken at each predetermined stage of construction.

To help eligible rural households attain the goal of "housing for everyone" in rural areas, the ministry of rural development launched the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana- Gramin (PMAY-G) on April 1, 2016, with an ultimate goal of constructing 2.95 crore pucca houses with essential facilities by March 2024.

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