Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday released financial assistance to over 6 lakh beneficiaries in UP under Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana–Gramin, through video conference. He also interacted with the beneficiaries, while the Union Rural Development Minister, Governor of Uttar Pradesh and Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh were also present.
About 6 lakh families of the state will get a total of more than Rs 2,600 crore in their bank accounts. Out of these 6 lakh families, 5 lakh will get the first instalment, while 80 thousand families will get their second instalment.
The Prime Minister said that unprecedented work is being done to change the lives of the poor, deprived and exploited. He recalled that he launched the PM Awaas Yojana from Agra five years ago. “This scheme has started changing the face of Indian villages. It is linked with the hopes of millions and has given the poorest of poor the confidence that she can be a home owner,” he said.
PM Modi asserted that Aatmanirbhar Bharat is directly linked to the selfconfidence of the country’s citizens and a house of one’s own enhances this self-confidence manifold. He said that the PM Awaas Yojana was started with an aim to provide every poor family a house before completion of 75 years of independence. 2 crore housing units have already been constructed in rural areas during recent years, PM Awas Yojana has accounted for 1.25 crore units with central government’s contribution being about Rs 1.5 lakh crore. The Prime Minister informed that in Uttar Pradesh 22 lakh Garmin Awaas are to be constructed out of which 21.5 lakh have been approved for construction. Out of this about 14.5 lakh families have already got their house mostly, under the present government.
“When designing this Yojana few things were kept in mind, such as those poor families who have lost hope of owning a house should be given priority, second, transparency in allocation, third, ownership to be vested preferably with women, fourth, monitoring via technology and finally a house equipped with all the basic amenities. The housing units are benefiting poor families who were living in kachcha houses, local workers, small farmers and landless labourers with no hope of owning a house. Landless families are getting the documents of the land and all the money is being transferred directly in the account of the beneficiary to prevent any corruption,” said the leader.
The Prime Minister emphasised that the effort is to reduce the gap between amenities of rural and urban areas and aim is to make life for rural people as easy as the urban population. Therefore, basic amenities such as Toilet, Lighting, Water and Gas connection are also added to the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana. The objective is that a poor person should not have to run around for basic facilities.
The Prime Minister remarked that PM Swamitva Yojana would be a game changer in improving the lives of the villagers, with UP being one of the pioneer states where it has been implemented. Under this scheme, the villagers will get their land along with ownership papers of the house. Drones are being used for surveys in thousands of villages in UP, mapping is being done so that people’s property remains registered with the government and land disputes come to an end. He said the biggest benefit of this scheme will be those villagers who will be able to take loans from the bank by mortgaging these houses. This will have a positive impact on the prices of the rural property. The work under this project is over in 85,000 villages of the state and people are getting digital certificates after the survey, locally called “Gharoni”. More than 51,000 such certificates have already been distributed in Uttar Pradesh.
PM Modi also said that roads built under Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana are making the life of the people of the village easy. He added that work is going on to provide fast internet access to more than 6 lakh villages through Optical fibres. This project would create new employment opportunities for the villagers. He said UP is ranked first in the country by generating 10 crore man-days of employment through Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan to support the migrant labourers who returned during Corona period. He listed various initiatives to improve the ease of living like Ayushman Bharat Scheme, National Nutrition Mission, UJALA scheme which has given UP a new identity. He listed the infrastructure projects like expressway and projects like AIIMS commissioned in UP and said it would help in accelerating the pace of development in UP. He cited this as the reason why many big companies are coming to invest in UP today. He said avenues are also open for small companies through ‘One District One Product’ where local artisans are getting benefitted.