Bihar’s rural development department (RDD) has decided to offer a financial assistance of up to ₹50,000 to the marginalised families whose houses were built under the now discontinued Indira Awas Yojna (IAY) but remained incomplete for some reasons, said a senior officer familiar with the matter.
The department has already asked the block development officers (BDOs) to carry out a survey of each and every village and identify the incomplete houses, which were sanctioned for people from scheduled castes (SCs), scheduled tribes (STs) and the extremely backward classes (EBCs) under the IAY before April 1, 2010.
RDD minister Shravan Kumar said the state government has approved a policy to provide financial grant up to ₹50,000 per unit for finishing the construction of IAY units, owned by the SC/ST and EBC community. “It has been observed that many families took the last instalments of the allotment for building the house under the IAY, but spent the amount elsewhere and their houses were left incomplete. The new policy aims to lend a helping hand to such beneficiaries and provide them the house to live in,” the minister said.
Officials said the survey of incomplete houses would be conducted in two stages. First, the rural housing assistants will carry out in-depth survey of each house of SC/ST and EBC communities and another committee headed by the BDOs would verify it and send the report to the RDD. The RDD would release the amount in two instalments of ₹25,000 each. The first instalment will reach the beneficiaries in the next couple of months.
The minister said the existing policy covered the houses built before April 1, 2010, though the IAY project was discontinued in 2015-16 since the Central government replaced it with PM Awas Yojna. “Houses built till 2015-16 would be taken up for reconstruction if the state government renewed the policy and extended its ambit,” said Kumar.
The state government has earlier approved the policy to provide a grant of ₹1.20 lakh to the SC/ST and EBC beneficiaries of IAY, whose houses were built before January 1, 1996, but had turned uninhabitable for want of maintenance. “The department has identified about 20,000 such houses which have become unlivable over the years. The first instalment of allocated sum has been sanctioned for nearly 18,000 units,” said the minister.
