Housing scheme: Teams to be assigned to identify houses

Kolkata: The state Panchayats and Rural Development (P&RD) department has assigned top priority to the verification of eligible households under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY).

The Centre has 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. The houses should be sanctioned within one month from the date of approval.

Directions have been given for constituting a verification team of 5-10 members in each Gram Panchayat depending upon the number of households to be inspected.

A team of 2-3 officials comprising Asha/Anganwadi and similar officials will hold house-to-house verification of the listed households. The house-to-house verification will start on December 4 and should be completed within 7 days.

It has been further 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. Chief Secretary had held a meeting on Friday and had meted out clear-cut instructions," a senior official of the P&RD department said.

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.

As per directions of the department, 2 per cent of the total listed households must be checked by the office of the District Magistrate, 3 per cent of the households should be checked by the office of the SDO, 10 per cent by the BDO office, the IC/OC will carry out random sample checking in consultation with the block officials, senior officials of the department will be attached to the districts for supervising the verification process.

The department has asked for the formation of a verification committee at the block level comprising BDO, Joint BDO, IC/OC of the respective police station and BL&RO for supervising the verification process. This committee will submit a certificate of verification concerning eligible households to the respective district magistrates. The certificate should be issued only after assessing the genuineness of the beneficiary list.