Bhubaneswar: Odisha government has converted 26.18 lakh kachha houses into pucca houses during the last six years.
This was disclosed at a review meeting chaired by chief secretary Asit Tripathy, here on Wednesday.
With an aim to convert all the rural houses into pacca houses by 2022, the State government has set a target to convert of 8,06, 329 houses to pacca houses by the end of the current fiscal. Against this target, so far 3, 57, 408 houses are under different stages of completion; and, the process for the balance cases, including the cases of 57,257 landless families have been expedited.
The Panchyati Raj & Drinking Water principal secretary Deo Ranjan Kumar Singh presented the details about the rural housing project in review meeting.
Reviewing the progress made so far, chief secretary directed to make the approach towards rural housing more people-centric by leveraging the existing norms. Tripathy directed to provide homestead land to all landless families since they are actually poorest of the poor.
The departments of Revenue & Disaster Management and Forest & Environment and Panchyati Raj & Drinking Water were advised to come up with proposals for amendments, if necessary, for ensuring pucca houses to all poor families.
Presenting the updates, director special projects Rajesh Pravakar Patil said, “ There are around 57,257 families in the waiting list for allotment of houses. In the meanwhile 8,069 families have been allotted homestead land”. Patil added, “An online system has been developed for mapping and monitoring of revenue village wise landless households. The system captures the details of the landless like their eligibility, nativity, classification of the land which they have encroached, status of house-site distribution.”.
The data show that many landless families have encroached objectionable land. At some places no leasable land is also available. The issue was deliberated in the meeting. It was decided that since the landless families listed in the waiting list of rural housing are more needy, the existing norms and regulations need to be modified for including them in the scheme.
Development commissioner Suresh Chandra Mohapatra, additional chief secretary forest & environment Dr Mona Sharma, principal secretary revenue & disaster management Bishnupada Sethi and additional secretary revenue and disaster management Avaya Nayak participated in the deliberations.
