61 lakh houses delivered under PMAY (U): Hardeep Singh Puri

The remaining houses are at various stages of completion as already sanctioned houses take an average of 18-24 months to complete, Puri said

The Centre on Sunday said that since the launch of the Prime Minister Awas Yojana (Urban) in 2015, a total 1.22 crore houses have been sanctioned so far to states in which 61 lakh houses have been handed over to beneficiaries.

The remaining houses are at various stages of completion as already sanctioned houses take an average of 18-24 months to complete, Union Minister for Housing and Urban Development Hardeep Singh Puri said in his series of tweets.

The Union minister tweeted in rebuttal to former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram's criticism of the PMAY (Urban) scheme. The Congress leader said only 58.59 lakh houses were completed and the scheme was not extended after March 31, 2022.

“There are and there will be thousands of street people in the towns and cities of India without a proper house,” Chidambaram said.

The PMAY (U) was launched in June, 2015 with the mission to provide affordable housing to all urban people by 2022. “The Mission period ended in March 2022 for fresh sanctions. However, for already sanctioned houses, it takes an average of 18-24 months to complete a pucca house with a toilet, kitchen, electricity and water connections,” Puri said.

In 10 years of the UPA government, investment in the urban development sector was only Rs 1.57 lakh crore, while in 7 years of the NDA that investment has risen to more than Rs 12 lakh crore. That is the reality that has won the trust of the people, the minister tweeted.

"The Modi Government ensures that the poor are not short changed by empty slogans like Garibi hatao’. It is ruthlessly eliminating middlemen & inefficiencies of an entitled & entrenched system. It is replaced with transparency - DBTs, use of Aadhaar, satellite monitoring & now drones," he said.

“This is unlike the UPA regimes when houses were completed on paper. A legacy of a huge number of badly constructed, incomplete & unallotted houses was left behind! What happened to the money spent there is anybody’s guess. That should’ve been a concern for any FM of that time,” Puri tweeted.