77 families get new homes after Kolhapur settlement undergoes transformation through PMAY’s beneficiary-led construction

Chhaya, along with 76 others from the same slum, are part of the beneficiary-led construction programme of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana -U (PMAY-U), which is the first slum redevelopment project in Kolhapur city.

“This home will be my hakkache ghar (my own house,” adds Bhikaji Waidande (37), who lives with his nine-member family in a 20×20-foot mud house and works as a site supervisor under contract with the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL).

The beneficiary-led construction programme is the first slum redevelopment project in Kolhapur city. (Express photo)

“For the first time, I am so happy that we will be shifting to our new home and have obtained all the paperwork and documents. Now, I can rightfully say this is my house,” he says, adding that as part of the project, all 77 slum dwellers have formed a cooperative housing society and appointed a contractor. “Now the housing project is nearing completion,” he said.

In this notified slum, there are several who rely on daily wages from construction sites and industries and most of the houses here were made of tin or cement sheets with mud or brick walls. Under the beneficiary-led construction vertical of PMAY-U, financial assistance to the tune of Rs 2.5 lakh is provided to eligible families belonging to EWS categories to construct new houses.

The land ownership has to be transferred to the individual families or given on lease to their cooperative housing society. The slum dwellers then raise their own funds via bank loans and get legal ownership of their houses .

“What is unique about this project is that the land has been transferred as individual plots to every family, ensuring legal property ownership rights for the residents,” Pratima Joshi, founder and executive director of Pune-based Shelter Associates told The Indian Express.

Most of the BLC projects have benefitted only those individual families where they had legal ownership of land, Joshi said and explained that most informal settlements get left out of this vertical as they are encroachments and lack tenure security.

“Often housing stocks created under the affordable housing vertical of the PMAY-U are beyond their affordability, leaving residents of informal settlements outside the ambit of tenured housing,” Joshi added.

The project- under the aegis of PMAY -was facilitated by Shelter Associates, a civil society organisation set up in 1994 to improve the living conditions of the urban poor in India and supported by Satej Patil, Congress MLC and former Kolhapur District Guardian Minister who was instrumental in ensuring that the slum dwellers were able to avail loans for their new homes.

The project- under the aegis of PMAY -was facilitated by Shelter Associates, a civil society organisation set up in 1994 to improve the living conditions of the urban poor in India. (Express photo)

When contacted, Patil told The Indian Express that various schemes have aimed to upgrade existing slums or relocate dwellers to new housing areas, often providing individual homes. “However, this project stands out, as 70-77 slum dwellers have been rehabilitated to their original site,” said Patil, adding that they were instrumental in procuring bank loans for majority of the beneficiaries.

Joshi also noted that while the PMAY-U launched in 2015 to ensure affordable all-weather houses in urban areas does focus on slum-dwellers, there are some lacunae in implementing the scheme at ground level in Maharashtra, especially in regards to the Beneficiary Led Construction (BLC) vertical of the scheme.

“The scheme is riddled with challenges like administrative delays, incorrect land records, land ownership issues and ambiguous guidelines. Hence, it is a matter of pride and joy that this is the only slum redevelopment project being implemented under the BLC- vertical of PMAY in Maharashtra,” she said.