Parekh to head panel on slum redevelopment

The government has decided to refer the draft guidelines of its ambitious Rajiv Awas Yojana,a scheme to make India slum-free,to an independent panel.

The government has decided to refer the draft guidelines of its ambitious Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY),a scheme to make India slum-free,to an independent panel. The eight-member expert panel,headed by HDFC Bank chairman Deepak Parekh,has been asked to give its recommendations within a month from its first meeting. The draft guidelines have been prepared by the housing and urban poverty alleviation ministry. The panel will make suggestions regarding the strategy,financial pattern and other features of the scheme so as to make a practical and implementable instrument of making India slum-free. The decision was announced by housing minister Kumari Selja today at the ministrys consultative committee meeting.

The scheme initially entailed dovetailing some of the existing schemes of the ministry like interest subsidy for housing for urban poor,affordable housing for all and two of the housing schemes under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. However,there is a lack of clarity on the implementation side,as no clear guidelines have emerged so far on how these existing schemes will be subsumed under RAY,approved by the Cabinet last year.

The ministry had prepared a model legal regulatory framework for according property rights to slum dwellers and urban poor based on consultations with NLSIU ( Bangalore),National Law University (Delhi),School of Planning and Architecture and Institute of Town Planners.

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Some states have expressed their willingness to assign property rights to slum-dwellers. The off-take under the scheme may begin soon by these states, said a senior ministry official. The financing pattern of the scheme had earlier run into trouble with Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia advocating a public-private partnership (PPP) model for financing of the slum re-development scheme,reduction of subsidy given the strain on government resources. Unofficial estimates peg the total cost of RAY scheme at around Rs 7-8 lakh crore.

In the initial draft of the scheme,the ministry had decided to retain the financing pattern on the same lines as the existing JNNURM,whereby the Centre pitches 50 per cent funds,up to 90 per cent in case of special category states,and the rest is matched by the respective states. The government seems to be dithering in its commitment to the scheme,given the sheer scale and complexity of the issue at hand. From the initial announcement of a target of five years for achieving a slum-free India,the target has been diluted in the last six months.

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