Rural housing scheme: State designates sr officials to supervise house-to-house visits

kolkata: The state Panchayats and Rural Development (P&RD) department on Monday designated senior officials in the rank of special secretary, additional secretary for supervising house-to-house visits in connection with rural housing under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY).

About 21 officials – one each for every district have been notified barring Kolkata (urban area) and a common supervising official for Kalimpong and Alipurduar districts.

The designated officials have been asked to immediately visit the respective districts under their supervision for a house-to-house visit.

The state government wants to give top priority to the verification of eligible households and the houses should be sanctioned within one month from the date of approval, senior officials said.

The department has already issued detailed instruction for conducting house to house visits, job card mapping, Gram Sabha meetings and preparing a permanent waiting list for the rural housing scheme.

It has been directed that physical verification of all mapped duplicate job card households should be carried out and erroneous names should be deleted.

"Identification and remand of ineligible beneficiaries are very crucial for proper implementation of the scheme and we want to maintain 100 per cent transparency in the whole process," a senior official of the Panchayats and Rural Development department said.

The Centre recently sanctioned funds to the tune of Rs 8200 crore for Bengal under PMAY in which allotment of 11.36 lakh houses has been given for fiscal 2022-23.

Directions have been given for constituting a verification team of five to ten members in each Gram Panchayat depending upon the number of households to be inspected.

A control room with 15-20 members will be set up at the SDO office for contacting listed households to assess their eligibility and to receive complaints if any.