Amidst complaints of alleged irregularities in availing benefits of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), the state administration today directed the district magistrates to ensure that the final list of the eligible beneficiaries is ready within 31 December.

At a meeting with the district magistrates, state chief secretary HK Dwivedi today expressed concern after it was revealed that the names of 84 per cent of beneficiaries for the scheme is yet to reach Nabanna state secretariat. The Centre has asked the state government to submit the beneficiary list on 31 December in order to avail funds under this scheme. Mr Dwivedi has further said that construction of the houses under the PMAY scheme has to be completed within three months after funds are released and geotagging has been made mandatory during the construction process.

Even though the Centre has sanctioned construction of 11 lakh houses under PMAY scheme, the DMs have managed to give approval for only 81,000 houses till now. With protests erupting across the districts alleging corruption and irregularities, the state government had to scrutinize the list of beneficiaries once again and exclude those who were undeserving. Mr Dwivedi today issued a strong message to the districts that are lagging behind in submitting their beneficiary lists and the respective DMs of the laggard districts have been directed to expedite work.

Thus the state panchayat department has geared up to ensure that the lists of all the districts are ready within these four days. In order to adhere to the guidelines issued by the Centre for availing the benefits for the PMAY, the state government had to exclude names of around 15 lakh beneficiaries from the final list. Around 56 lakh beneficiaries had enlisted their names under the scheme. However, the names of five lakh beneficiaries were struck down at the initial level.

In the next stage, another 10 lakh were excluded from the list during rectification. “While addressing the meeting in video conference mode, Mr Dwivedi issued a stern message to Murshidabad, Purulia, Alipurduar and North Dinajpur that have registered slow progress. He directed these districts to improve the progress of their work,” said a source. Till date, list of two lakh beneficiaries has been approved while the figure was 74,000 till yesterday. A total of 11,36,488 beneficiaries have to be approved by 31 December following which this list will be submitted to Delhi.