Third BRS MLA to join the Congress
A day after BRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao claimed that 20 Congress MLAs were ready to quit the party and join him, his party MLA Prakash Goud from Rajendranagar met Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy.
Brushing aside a Congress member’s claim that the government’s housing scheme was a failure, Minister for Urban Affairs and Housing, Hardeep Singh Puri on Tuesday told the Lok Sabha that the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana is a “roaring success” and the government’s aim of housing for all by 2022 will be achieved.
He said that title of houses built under the scheme will be in the name of a woman in the family as part of efforts to boost woman empowerment. “We expect every citizen to have a home by 2022,” he said, answering supplementaries during the Question Hour.
Based on feedback from states, the figure for the shortfall of houses in the urban area has been revised down to 11 million by his ministry from earlier 18 million, Puri said, adding that over 37.45 lakh houses have been sanctioned.
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K C Venugopal (Congress) said nationalised banks were not giving loans to the poor and claimed the scheme was “failing”. Puri retorted by saying that he was trying to be “modest” in his reply and was “taken aback” by Venugopal’s claim. He cited budgetary allocation and financial outlay for building houses for the poor to assert that the “scheme is a roaring success”.
Pralhad Joshi (BJP) spoke about building of only 38,000 houses in Karnataka, a state he hails from, against a sanction of 3.3 lakh and wanted to know what the ministry was doing. Puri said he had been supervising works in all states and has been speaking to various state governments. He also said his ministry had amended the guidelines of the scheme to increase coverage area under it.
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