The Centre has prescribed to the states stage-wise deadlines under the rural housing scheme Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Grameen (PMAY-G), and warned them with fines for any delays.

A letter from the rural development ministry, sent to all the states last week, said the penalties for delays in sanctioning houses or releasing funds would be deducted from the funds released towards administrative costs under the scheme in future.

The Centre bears 60 per cent of the cost of the programme. The scheme, under which a beneficiary receives Rs 1.2 lakh in the plains and Rs 1.3 lakh in the hills to build a house, has witnessed slow progress.

The Centre has set a target of 2.95 crore houses by March 2024; till now, two crore houses have been built. Every year, the states are allotted a target under the scheme. After this, they issue sanction letters to the beneficiaries. From now on, this will count as the first stage, to be completed within a one-month deadline from the target allotment.

The following stages are about the five instalments in which funds are given to the beneficiary, with the first instalment to be released within a week of the sanction. The second instalment should be released within three months of the first, and the following three instalments in gaps of two months each.

The ministry has said that if the sanction letters are delayed beyond one month from the target allotment, the penalty will be Rs 10 per house for the first month of delay and Rs 20 per house for each subsequent month of delay.If the first instalment of funds is delayed beyond a week from the date of sanction, a penalty of Rs 10 will be charged for each week of delay.

A ministry official said the measure is aimed at accelerating the pace of house construction to meet the March 2024 target. But Aneesh Thillenkery, secretary of the Ekta Parishad, a civil society organisation spearheading a movement for a legally entitled right to homestead land for the landless, said suppliers of material — and not government officials — often cause the delay.

“If the Centre starts imposing penalties, the state may ultimately penalise the contractual workers doing the administrative work,” he said.

These officials feed data to the Centre online on every house, the progress of construction and the funds release. They also process the beneficiaries’ applications and sanction and release funds.LandlessNearly 2.3 lakh beneficiary households cannot build houses because they have no land. The rural development ministry had asked the states to provide land to them but the states are finding the task difficult. Now the Union ministry has decided to allow the construction of multi-storey buildings on government land for the landless.