NEW DELHI, Oct 5: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday accused the previous Samajwadi party government in Uttar Pradesh of blocking the Centre’s plans for constructing houses for the urban poor and claimed that a fillip to the project was given only after the BJP government headed by Yogi Adityanath came to power in the state.
“The previous Uttar Pradesh Government (the Samajwadi Party dispensation), did not want to construct houses for the poor and even obstructed the Centre’s plans under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY),” Modi said.
Modi was speaking on day one of the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs’ three-day conference on “new urban India” in Lucknow. He said the beneficiaries of the 3 crore PMAY houses built so far had become “lakhpatis.”
Claiming that urban planning had earlier become a “victim of politics,” Modi said the U.P. Government before 2017 did not even construct 18 of the 18,000 houses sanctioned under PMAY. After in 2017 Yogi Adityanath came to power, nine lakh houses had been built under PMAY-Urban and 14 lakh more were in various stages of construction, he claimed.
Earlier during the day, Modi visited the exhibition on various urban missions in the country and interacted with beneficiaries of PMAY-Urban from U.P. He also virtually-inaugurated the work of 75 urban development projects in the state under Smart Cities Mission and AMRUT and a fleet of 75 electric buses.
He also announced the setting up of Atal Bihari Vajpayee Chair in the Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University in Lucknow.
The prime minister inaugurated ‘Azadi@75 -New Urban India: Transforming Urban Landscape’ conference-cum-expo on Tuesday and digitally handed over keys of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana- Urban (PMAY-U) houses to 75,000 beneficiaries and interacted with some of them.
After arriving at Indira Gandhi Pratisthan, Modi, along with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Union Urban Development Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and Governor Anandiben Patel, walked through the three exhibitions being set up in the expo. He also inquired about the Ayodhya development masterplan.
(Manas Dasgupta)