NEW DELHI: Highlighting the delay in finalisation and necessary approvals for implementation of various schemes, the standing committee on Housing and Urban affairs has recommended that the ministry should complete paperwork and guidelines for any scheme in consultation with stakeholders before any budget announcement.
The panel headed by Lok Sabha MP Magunta Sreenivasulu Reddy made the recommendation after it observed a huge time gap between the announcement and actual execution of a few schemes.
In its third report on Demands for Grants (2025-26) of the MoHUA presented in Lok Sabha on Wednesday, the committee noted, “The ministry should conduct consultation with stakeholders and finalise the scheme document/guidelines prior to any budget announcement to avoid allocation and parking of funds for such Schemes wherein approvals would spill to subsequent financial years.”
The Committee observed that the public bus transport scheme which was announced in the Budget of 2021-22 was approved by the Government only in August 2023 as PM-eBus Sewa Scheme. However, the funds under the scheme were-- for the first time-- actually spent during the financial year 2024-25.
Similarly, National Urban Digital Mission, which was announced as a new Scheme in the July, 2024 budget with a Budgetary allocation of Rs1,150 crore for financial year (FY) 2024-25 have yet not received the Cabinet approval. The funds allocated thus remained unutilized, the Committee also noted in the report.
The Panel further said that the ministry should ensure that the two new schemes announced the recent budget-- ‘Urban Challenge Fund’ and ‘Scheme for Industrial Housing’-- are designed and guidelines prepared at the earliest and all the approvals should also be sought without any delay to ensure that Rs 10,000 crore and Rs 2,500 crore respectively allocated to the both schemes in the budget 2025-26 are actually spend.