The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Thursday approved Phase-1 of Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) to provide financial aid to States willing to assign property rights to slum-dwellers.
The scheme is expected to be launched in 250 cities which have an estimated 32.10 million people living in slums and will cover them by the end of 12th Plan (2017).
The Centre will bear 50 per cent of the cost of slum redevelopment. In order to ensure flow of institutional finance to the urban poor, the government has agreed to establish a Mortgage Risk Guarantee Fund with an initial corpus of Rs 1,000 crore to facilitate lending to the urban poor for housing purposes.
The scheme has been designed on the lines of Jawaharlal National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) which also aimed at inclusive urban growth by enabling slum redevelopment and decent housing with security of tenure.
As in JNNURM, the Central assistance is conditional to reforms by the States, in terms of the enactment of law, assigning property rights, as also reforms in the policy to ease land and housing shortages.