Prime Minister Narendra Modi was addressing a public meeting in Surat, Gujarat on Tuesday, 30 January, when he claimed that post 2014 over 1 crore 30 lakh houses have been constructed in the rural pockets of India.
He also said that the UPA government only built 25 lakh houses during its tenure.
According to reports available on the official website of Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, houses built under Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana-Gramin (PMAY-G), the total houses built after 2014 is 1,13,19,949.
Below is the year-wise house completion report in the PMAY-G under the filter: "All Central Schemes" in all states:
Comparing the data from the report against what the prime minister claimed, the difference comes down to 16,80,051 houses.
When we analysed the table, we found that the last column in the table titled: "Total houses completed in 2017-2019**" shows that 76 lakh houses have been built in past two years.
Now, it should be noted that total houses built in 2017-18 and 2018-19 sums up to 35,91,599 houses in total. Then how come the total shows more than 76 lakh houses?
Interestingly, when we referred to the double asterisks, there is a mention of houses built in 2017-18 at the bottom of the page which shows a figure of nearly 44 lakh.
According to the Rajya Sabha reply on the achievements of PMAY by Minister of Rural Development Narendra Singh Tomar, "The erstwhile rural housing scheme Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY) has been restructured into PMAY-G from 1 April 2016." The PMAY-G was launched on 20 November 2016.
After combining the targets that were carried froward from IAY with the PMAY-G, the total number of houses constructed comes up to 44.55 lakh.
UPA Built Only 25 Lakh Houses?
Prime Minister Modi also claimed that the UPA government built only 25 lakh houses during its tenure. This is not the first time that the prime minister is making this claim.
On 19 October 2018, PM Modi said that UPA built 25 lakh houses in the last four years of its tenure. The claim was debunked in October 2018.
The UPA government constructed a total of 89.65 lakh houses as part of the IAY in their last four years between 2010-11 & 2013-14.
(Correction: The figures under PMAY-Gramin mentioned earlier were erroneous. We had not taken into calculation the houses that were sanctioned and built under the Indira Gandhi Awas Yojana for the year 2017-18. This has since been rectified. The story was updated at 6.30 pm on 1 February to reflect this change.)
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