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Minister for Urban Employment & Poverty Alleviation, Kum Selja today said that the new Housing Policy will be announced soon incorporating suggestion given by various state governments. She also said that a joint conference of State Housing, Panchayat Raj & Rural Development Ministers will be held to evolve a common strategy to check migration from rural areas by undertaking specific developmental activities in rural areas.The Minister also said that efforts would be made to hasten urban reform process using Urban Reforms Incentive Fund.
She also said that the two-day conference of state housing ministers deliberated on various central schemes and a mission mode project will be formulated soon by dovetailing some of the existing schemes. Some of the suggestions made by the participants include: revision of VAMBAY guidelines for effective implementation by taking into consideration the difficulties faced by various State Agencies; increasing the unit cost and higher central subsidy under VAMBAY; exemption from Stamp Duty for EWS / VAMBAY housing, computerisation of land records, simplification and streamlining of transaction procedures in a time bound manner by the State Governments, rationalisation of house tax, property tax, promotion of rental housing, appropriate fiscal incentives in the housing sector, 100% tax deduction on all investments in asset creation in urban infrastructure and real estates.Also issues like coordination between R&D organisations and implementing agencies in the transfer of innovative and cost effective technologies which need to be regulated by a nodal authority; recognising the role of IITs in the formulation of codal provisions for testing and demonstration of non-conventional and cost effective technology; encouragement to innovative technology, continuous feed-back, use of building centres on a total system approach for dissemination of cost effective technologies; and designating building centres as “resource centres” were discussed.
Regarding urban reforms, participants felt that there is a need to devise specific performance indicators which could be used as a feedback to second phase of URIF; rationalisation of user charges; large scale capacity building and hand-holding support in the reform areas to the urban local bodies; and additional funds for URIF II.
On the issue of Public Private Partnership in Housing with a focus on EWS / LIG, the major recommendations were the need to change the “mind set” of key stakeholders to recognise the role of private sector in providing housing for EWS and LIG categories; review of subsidy culture, using ‘land as a resource’ as in the Dharvi Model at Mumbai, fiscal incentives for the private sector, involvement of private sector in the Master Plan, adequate compensation for land acquisition, waiving of Stamp Duty for allotment of land / constructed houses to the EWS / VAMBAY category.they also suggested that there should be optimum utilisation of surplus land, pooling of public land, joint ventures with the private sectors, lower rate of interest for private sector for EWS / LIG categories, involvement of private developers in social utility infrastructure to avoid unauthorised encroachments / constructions and a single window clearance for housing schemes.
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