The union cabinet today approved the launch of ‘Housing for All by 2022’ programme, which is aimed at rehabilitation of slum dwellers and promotion of affordable housing for the economically weaker sections (EWS) through credit-linked subsidy.
According to an official statement, a central grant of Rs.1 lakh per house, on an average, would be available under the slum rehabilitation programme.
It said a state government would have flexibility in deploying this slum rehabilitation grant to any slum rehabilitation project taken for development using land as a resource for providing houses to slum dwellers.
“Under the credit-linked interest subsidy component, interest subsidy of 6.5 percent on housing loans availed up to a tenure of 15 years will be provided to economic weaker sections/lower income group (EWS/LIG) categories, wherein the subsidy pay-out on net present value (NPV) basis would be about Rs.2.3 lakh per house for both categories,” the statement said.
Addressing a press conference after the cabinet meeting, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said housing for all would a centrally-sponsored scheme.
The scheme will cover the entire urban area consisting of 4,041 statutory towns with initial focus on 500 class I cities and it will be implemented in three phases as follows – Phase-I (April 2015 – March 2017) to cover 100 cities to be selected from states/UTs as per their willingness; Phase – IIA (April 2017 – March 2019) to cover additional 200 cities and Phase-III (April 2019 – March 2022) to cover all other remaining cities.