Complex guidelines slow down pace of housing schemes

Geeta Purushottam of Kinnya in Mangalore taluk is yet to receive the Rs. 75,000 subsidy under the State government’s Basava Vasati Yojane even four years after she applied for the scheme and constructed a house.

In August last year, the Rajiv Gandhi Rural Housing Corporation rejected her application for “violating” the procedure: the daily-wage labourer couple could not provide stage-wise Global Positioning System-linked photos of their house under construction.

At Arambodi in Belthangady village, Gulabi Shettigar has received just Rs. 14,500 as subsidy after the corporation deemed, from photographs, that the house was too expensive.

Their applications are just a few among the many thousands, which now lie at the Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat awaiting approval.

Starting construction before receiving the work order (that is, after sanctioning of application, the government will send an official work order); not starting the construction within 90 days of receiving the work order; not uploading GPS-linked images of walls, roof, and the completed house during construction; and deviating from the 500 sq ft. design for the house – these are some of the reasons given for the deadlock. Officials cite complexity of guidelines for the abysmal performances of these schemes.

“In the initial years, beneficiaries and panchayat-level officers were not aware of the GPS-linked photos or the intricacies of the scheme. The software used by the corporation automatically blocks these houses,” said a ZP official. As a result, more than 10,000 beneficiaries are yet to receive subsidy under the 2010-11 Basava Vasati Yojane.

Already, around 748 houses out of 3,515 beneficiaries of the 2013-14 scheme have been blocked for “not constructing the foundation.” With just four per cent of the houses having been completed, the progress looked bleak this year too, said officials.

The fate of other housing schemes is not different. The Centrally-funded Indira Awas Yojana, for instance, has houses pending from 2006. Just five per cent of the 2,668 houses to be built in 2013-14 have been completed, with nearly 500 blocked already.

ZP president Asha Thimmappa Gowda recently led a delegation of around 15 other members to convince the corporation to unblock the houses. “They have given us time till the end of the month to start construction of houses. We believe at least 50 per cent of the beneficiaries can receive subsidy now,” she said.

However, Ms. Gowda admitted that a sizeable number of beneficiaries, who had extended their houses or spent more than Rs. 5 lakh, might not receive the subsidy. “We’ll ask ZP engineers to calculate the expenditure, but we cannot resolve for the government to change the rules,” she said.