Zee Media Bureau, New Delhi :
In what is likely to be perceived as the new BJP dispensation’s attempt towards removing the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty names from a plethora of government schemes, the Narendra Modi government is considering to change the Indira Awas Yojna (IAY), the rural housing scheme, to National Gramin Awas Mission (GRAM).
Sources on Monday claimed that a formal announcement in this regard is most likely to be made during Prime Minister’s Independence Day speech.
The 29 year old scheme was first launched by the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1985 and the present regime now wants to upgrade it into a mission with a revised target and additional cost.
The Modi government is also expected to double the spending per house to Rs 1.5 lakh and raising the unit size to at least 30 sq mts with toilet and bathing space as its integral part, sources claim.
The new BJP government aim to make the IAY more purposeful for the below poverty line (BPL) population in the rural areas, a senior RD Ministry official said recently.
The Ministry has also invited feedback from the States and stakeholders on the proposed GRAM, which the government proposes to set up in the form of an autonomous registered society to implement and monitor the scheme at the national level.
Similar missions will be set up at the State and district level, as per the reports.
Setting up of the Mission will allow the Modi government’s aim to achieve target of providing ‘pucca houses for all by 2022’, including those in the villages as well as total sanitation as envisaged under the Swach Bharat Mission announced in the Union Budget 2014-15, the official said. There are more than 600 government schemes named after the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Before the polls, the BJP had indicated that if they came to power they would review the schemed named after three generations of the Gandhi dynasty. A month before the Lok Sabha elections results were declared, senior BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu on April 16 had attacked the Congress for “glorification of only one family.”
“Congress launched 650 schemes in the name of three personalities – Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi – giving an impression that no other leader other than one family did any good for the country,” he had said while speaking to reporters in Patna.
