What are the different housing schemes of the government?
As per the information available on the government’s housing website, the public housing program in India started with the rehabilitation of refugees immediately after independence and since then, it has been a major focus area of the Government as an instrument of poverty alleviation. Rural housing program, as an independent program, started with Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY) in 1996. Although IAY addressed the housing needs in the rural areas, certain gaps were identified during the concurrent evaluations and the performance Audit by Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India in 2014. To address these gaps in the rural housing program, the IAY has been re-structured into Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana –Gramin (PMAY-G) in April 2016. The urban equivalent of the scheme was earlier known as the Rajiv Awas Yojana which has now been restructured into the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana –Urban.

How many houses have been constructed over the years?
Multiple government data sources have been looked at to arrive at the number of houses constructed over the years in the rural housing scheme. Information provided by the government in the Rajya Sabha in 2016, in the Lok Sabha in 2018, CAG report of the year 2014, annual reports of the Ministry of Rural development have all been combined to arrive at these figures.

As per these figures, the UPA government constructed a total of 89.65 lakh houses as part of the IAY in their last four years between 2010-11 & 2013-14. The current government, on the other hand, constructed a total of 111.44 lakh houses in their first four years between 2014-15 & 2017-18.

As far as UPA’s last four years is concerned, the Prime Minister was way off the mark. The UPA constructed 89.65 lakh houses,  almost 3.5 times the number of houses claimed by the PM. As far as the current government is concerned and if the houses constructed in the last six months is also taken into account, the figure might be closer to the 1.25 crore houses as mentioned by the PM. It has to be noted that this is only the count of rural houses for both governments. If the urban housing numbers are also included, then the numbers for both the governments could be higher.

How did various governments fare?
In general, the number of houses constructed has seen an increasing trend over the years. The NDA-1 government under Vajpayee on average constructed around 11.68 lakh houses per year during their 6 year tenure. The average under UPA-1 was 17.39 lakh houses per year whereas it was 24.7 lakh houses per year under UPA-2. Under the current government, the average per year is more than UPA 2, at 27.86 lakh per year.

Note: The research has been done by Factly and is part of a larger series on the 4 years of the Modi government.