BHUBANESWAR: Even as Odisha government has been pressing for opening a special window for inclusion of about seven lakh households in the Awaas+ portal for housing assistance under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Grameen (PMAY-G), the report the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has presented a contrary picture of the state surrendering 5.27 lakh houses due to non-availability of eligible beneficiaries.
The CAG report on panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) for the year ending March 2021 tabled in the Assembly on Tuesday revealed the state government requested the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) in May 2021 for the surrender of 5.27 lakh houses allotted to it during 2019-20 and 2020-21 due to non-availability of households in different categories in the permanent wait list (PWL).
As a matter of practice, every year the empowered committee of MoRD fixed the target for the construction of houses for the next year in consultation with the state government. The ministry had allotted a cumulative target of 24.23 lakh up to March 2021.
In its compliance report, the Panchayati Raj department stated that since a large number of applications were received for inclusion, it could not complete verification of the applications within the time fixed by the ministry resulting in the surrender of 5.27 lakh houses. During joint physical verification from September 2021 to January 2022 in 72 test-checked gram panchayats, the audit found that 203 families were living in shanties due to delays in the identification of beneficiaries.
The CAG report further pointed out that the gram sabhas had identified 27.85 households for housing assistance. Since the permanent wait list (PWL) of the state had only 18.86 lakh beneficiaries, 8.59 households who were deemed eligible by gram sabhas had to be excluded.
The audit found that 10,852 beneficiaries in the priority categories, including 2,886 scheduled categories, were erroneously deleted from the PWL. No evidence of gram sabha approval for the inclusion or deletion of beneficiaries was found during the verification of records of GPs and appellate committees. The reason cited by the department for the deletion of such a large number of beneficiaries was that multiple beneficiaries existed with the same name.
The audit further detected that beneficiaries of 95 houses in Nabarangpur and Sambalpur had passed away without leaving any legal heir. Though their houses remained incomplete, Rs 44.8 lakh have been released to them by the department. In 13 cases, houses were sanctioned and payments were made to non-beneficiaries in some districts.