ROURKELA: After a gap of three years, the Rourkela Municipal Corporation (RMC) has renewed its efforts to provide housing units to slum dwellers at Madhusudanpali under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. The erstwhile Rourkela Municipality during 2012 had initiated efforts for implementation of RAY at Madhusudanpali and during 2014, a project report was prepared to cover 4,800 beneficiaries. But immediately after, RAY was replaced with PMAY and Central grant of Rs 80 crore was returned. Later in 2017, a proposal for PMAY at Madhusudanpali was approved. But, there was no progress in the project.
RMC sources said for in-situ implementation of the PMAY project for over 36.85 acres of Government land at Madhusudanpali, the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) was appointed as transitional advisor to conduct survey, prepare the design and finalise modalities. Since there was no progress in the work, the RMC has initiated fresh efforts to take up the proposal. And this time, it is involving a private agency in the work. As per the RMC plan, each low-cost PMAY housing unit would cost Rs 4.5 lakh with beneficiary share of Rs 1.5 lakh, while contribution of the Central Government and private developer would be Rs 1.5 lakh each.
They said 35 per cent of the total 36.85 acres would be provided to the private developer free of cost for commercial use and in lieu of it, the private developer would construct multi-storey residential apartments with all civic amenities on remaining 65 per cent land. They said efforts are underway to motivate the beneficiaries and once they agree, they would be shifted to a proposed transitional house near DAV pond at Basanti Colony for a brief period to allow construction of residential apartments.RMC Deputy Commissioner Sudhanshu Bhoi said while some beneficiaries are willing to pay for the housing unit, many others are not. “We will talk to all the beneficiaries first and then prepare a detailed project report”, he said.