Naveen Patnaik Urges PM To Open Housing Scheme App For All Odisha Districts

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has appealed to the Centre to open the window of Aawaas+ mobile app for all the districts in the state for a period of one month.

This will enable the state government to migrate the data of identified eligible HHs to Aawaas+, “which will be a pragmatic step towards achieving the objective of safe housing for all”, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday.

In his letter, the CM referred to an earlier communication on December 15, 2020 to request coverage of around 6 lakh identified eligible beneficiaries under the Prime Minister Aawaas Yojna (Grameen) in Odisha districts not affected by Cyclone Fani.

“In this regard, I would like to apprise that Aawaas+ window was opened by the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India only for 14 Cyclone Fani affected districts for a period of one month,” the CM wrote.

“The process of identification could not be taken up in the remaining 16 districts not affected by Cyclone Fani. These are predominantly tribal dominated districts and cover all the KBK areas. State has identified the left-out eligible III-Is in these districts through the state developed RI-I Portal observing the procedure similar to Aawaas+,” he pointed out.

“In such a scenario, the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India may be directed to open the window of Aawaas+ Mobile App for the entire State of Odisha for a period of one month to migrate the data of identified eligible 1-1Hs to Aawaas+,” he added.

Earlier, the Centre had allotted a PMAY(G) target of 8.17 lakhs in favour of Odisha to provide shelter security to the families affected by Cyclone Fani.