When questioned about the state government’s claim about constructing 17 lakh houses under BPGY, he said “Please don’t ask me about this. I don’t want to give any statement”.
“This BJD government is a government of lies. We have been telling the media that the claim of this government on the number of pucca houses it has constructed under the BPGY is utterly false and misleading which has come true with the statement of the Panchayati Raj secretary today,” BJP spokesperson Golakh Mohapatra told mediapersons here.
The BJD, on the other hand, has refuted the charge.
“Nowhere the government has said that these pucca houses have been constructed under BPGY. It has not mentioned this in the advertisements. The government has said that it has provided pucca houses. The government has said that out of 25 lakh pucca houses, it has provided 17 lakh houses to the beneficiaries so far,” BJP spokesperson Samir Das said.
As per the statistics of the Panchayati Raj department, the state government, from 2014-15 till August 27, 2018, has built 2,83,897 pucca houses under BPGY and 16,08,882 pucca houses under the Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) and Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY).
“The government has planned to construct 7 lakh pucca houses in 60 days this year with new technology for which it signed a MoU with the Roorkee-based Central Building Research Institute (CBRI), a constituent establishment of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on Monday for construction of these houses in the hilly and tribal areas in the state,” chief secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi told mediapersons here.
Notably, the Centre had given three-year deadline to the state government to construct 9.92 lakh houses of which the state government till date has managed to construct only 4.96 lakh.