New Delhi / Agartala, Jan 31 (TIWN): Department of Rural Development was given a target to complete 33 lakh houses in 2016-17. These included houses that were taken up under the Indira AwaasYojana (IAY) and were incomplete on 1st April 2016. Many of them were incomplete for many years. Of these, 21.57 lakh houses have been completed so far.

This is nearly double of what was being completed each year in the 2012-13 to 2014-15 period. The Table below shows the year wise completion –

 Sincere efforts are being made to complete 33 lakh houses in the current financial year, in partnership with States.

In the current financial year, on 20^th November, 2016, Hon’ble Prime Minister formally launched Pradhan MantriAwaasYojana (Gramin) - PMAY(G), with an original approval for33 lakhs new PMAY Gramin houses, which has now been increased to 44 lakhs.

The targets have been communicated to the States and after following an intensive process of beneficiary selection using SECC ( Socio-Economic Caste Census-2011)  and Gram Sabha, housing design typology finalization, finalization of training programme of rural masons and geo tagging of all currently occupied houses to establish that only poor households have been selected, States have started the registration process for construction and over 14.23 lakh beneficiaries have already been registered so far.

 16.53 lakh images of current dwellings are uploaded on the AwaasSoftwebsite.  The work on all these houses are expected to be started over the next one month, and completion period for these houses has been brought down to only 12 months with efforts to complete more than 50 per cent of houses in six months.  Most of these 44 lakh houses are expected to be completed before December, 2017. Altogether one crore and 33 lakh houses will be completed in three years from 2016-17 to 2018-19/