A verbal spat broke out between the former CM and the current Deputy CM over the Central Government’s ambitious housing scheme, PM Awas Yojana, in Raipur on Tuesday.
The argument took place at the Raipur Press Club regarding the PM Awas issue, with the leaders presenting figures concerning the houses sanctioned and completed during their respective tenures with Congress and BJP workers both confronting each other with various slogans outside. Given the situation, security was heightened at the scene.
Deputy CM Vijay Sharma had recently challenged former Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel to open a debate on the issue, to which Baghel accepted the challenge. Consequently, both the leaders arrived at the event organised at the Raipur Club and presented their respective viewpoints on the scheme.
While presenting the figures, Deputy CM stated that the Central Government completed 17.7 lakh PM Awas houses in Chhattisgarh and also claimed that the data regarding this is available on the Government of India’s website. Sharma asserted that Chhattisgarh had constructed the highest number of houses under the scheme in the country.
Targeting the previous government in power, Sharma remarked that while financial approvals were granted during its tenure, the houses were not completed. According to Sharma, during the Congress government’s five-year tenure, a financial approval of approximately Rs 3,900 crore was granted for housing and around three lakh houses were completed. In contrast, the BJP government spent Rs 16,000 crore in just two and a half years.
Presenting the figures, former Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel stated that in 2018, 3,48,960 houses were sanctioned, of which 139,000 were completed. For the fiscal year 2020-2021, the target was 1,97,811 housing units, of which 1,22,000 were completed.
Baghel noted that no government had the money it needed to spare during the COVID-19 years. The PM Awas portal, he said, was shut in 2022-23, and his government had pushed back — demanding its share of funds from the Centre and keeping up a steady back-and-forth with New Delhi on the issue.
He pointed to the 2011 census as the basis for a backlog of roughly 18 lakh houses. Of those, his government managed to sanction 6,97,000 units.