The construction of 4,62,276 houses have been completed in Chhattisgarh as on December 10, 2018 under Prime Minister Awas Yojana (Gramin), the Central Government has informed.

Chhattisgarh is among four other States which has the highest number of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana–Gramin (PMAY-G) beneficiaries as on August 2018, the Central Government has informed.

The other States are- Odisha, Rajasthan, Maharashra, Jharkhand which are on course for completion of PMAY-G houses within the prescribed time-frame, it informed.

To ensure quality construction of a house and to facilitate availability of trained masons in the rural areas, Rural Mason Trainings are being organised. A total of 25,000 trainees have been enrolled, out of which 12,500 trainees have been trained and certified.

The rural mason training has been initiated in 11 States and the States of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh have taken the lead and have the highest number of certified rural masons.

It is targeted to train one lakh rural masons by March, 2019 which will contribute towards not only the quality construction of PMAY-G houses in rural India but also to the skilled manpower pool of the country. In addition, this will also help in getting better livelihood opportunities for the trained Masons.

States have also taken adequate steps to ensure continuous availability of construction material at reasonable prices so that the pace and quality of construction is not adversely affected.

So far, 38.22 lakh PMAY-G houses have been completed. With Assam and Bihar also speeding up completion of houses, we hope to complete 60 lakh PMAY-G houses by June, 2018 and one crore by December, 2018.

The performance of the rural housing scheme has shown upward swing, increased nearly four times in the last four years. This is despite the fact that it took a few months to complete the process of beneficiary registration, geo-tagging, account verification etc. after the programme’s launch on November 20, 2016.

Towards meeting the target of construction of one crore PMAY-Gramin houses by December, 2018, while more than 76 lakh beneficiaries have been sanctioned houses, approximately 63 lakh beneficiaries have received 1st installment.

The Highest number of PMAY-G houses have been completed in the State of Uttar Pradesh during the financial year 2017-18 followed by Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal.

Construction of bigger and better houses has been possible due to transparent beneficiary selection, capacity building of beneficiaries, timely availability of funds to the beneficiaries, structured monitoring and course-correction based on the feedback on implementation

The faster completion of quality houses under PMAY-G has been facilitated by payment of assistance directly into the beneficiary account through IT-DBT platform directly from single State Nodal Account maintained at the State level. Use of IT-DBT platform has ensured transparent, hassle-free and quality programme implementation. Payment to beneficiaries under PMAY-G, is routed through Public Financial Management System (PFMS).

Ministry of Rural Development has developed a Performance Index incorporating various parameters of progress under PMAY-G. The Index acts as a tool not only to monitor progress of PMAY-G on various parameters across States, Districts, Blocks and Gram Panchayats but also instills healthy competition among them. It also helps in identifying areas of improvement and to motivate them towards better performance in implementation of the programme.

The ranking of State/UTs and below on Performance Index is done on real time basis and changes everyday based on the performance of the State/UT and below. The national ranking of districts has also been introduced which places the performance of a district in the national perspective.

Pucca houses constructed under PMAY-G with facilities like toilet, LPG connection, electricity connection, drinking water etc., are changing the rural landscape at a very fast pace. In some States PMAY-G houses are coming up in clusters/colonies which are generally for landless beneficiaries and these are provided many facilities in convergence with various Central and State schemes.