Minister for Rural Development I. Periyasamy on Monday countered Governor R.N. Ravi’s allegation that poor villagers in Nagapattinam district were unable to benefit from the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), the Prime Minister’s housing scheme, due to “administrative apathy and alleged corruption” of the State government.
Mr. Ravi had made the comments after his visit to Keezhvenmani village on Sunday. In a statement, Mr. Periyasamy said that 127 beneficiaries in Venmani panchayat were granted permission to construct houses under PMAY, of whom 75 had already completed construction while work was under way for the remaining 52 families.
He said that the Union government had set panchayat-wise targets, and had not approved a proposal to transfer the sanctioned number of houses from panchayats where there were no eligible beneficiaries to panchayats where the demand and the number of eligible beneficiaries were high. It was because of this that the State was unable to sanction more houses under PMAY in panchayats such as Venmani, he said.
Pointing out that a recent enumeration by the State government had shown that there were 66 thatched roof houses in Venmani panchayat that were eligible for the scheme, he said that they will be converted into concrete houses in the future under a State government scheme.
He said that under PMAY (Rural), the Union government provided only ₹72,000 as its share to each beneficiary, while the State provided ₹1.68 lakh. Moreover, an additional grant, amounting to ₹38,640, was provided through the Swachh Bharat Mission (Rural) and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). Thus, the total grant of ₹2,78,640 provided to each beneficiary in Tamil Nadu was the highest in the country, he added.
In Nagapattinam district, 31,501 houses were sanctioned under PMAY (Rural), of which 23,110 had been constructed. A total of 2,93,277 houses had been constructed under the scheme since the DMK government came to power, he said. He said while the Union government’s allocation was ₹ 2,933.31 crore for this, State had allocated ₹ 3,116.54 crore.
