At a time when the West Bengal government has started working on its own housing scheme, the Banglar Awas Yojana (BAY), the BJP used a survey report of the state government to allege that the ruling Trinamool Congress misappropriated central funds meant for the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY).
Since November 2022, the Centre has halted funding for West Bengal under the PMAY after central teams allegedly discovered irregularities in the scheme's implementation in the state.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced that the state government would independently construct houses for the poor under the BAY. In October, a list of beneficiaries was prepared and verification began as part of this initiative.
Meanwhile, protests erupted in several parts of the state with angry residents alleging unfair exclusion of their names from the list. Protesters gathered outside the offices of the BDO in several districts, claiming that local TMC leadership had removed their names from the list.
In this context, the BJP has asserted that as part of the first round of the BAY, the West Bengal government had surveyed 18.36 lakh households from which 4,18,445 (22.76 per cent) were rejected.
Showing a page of the state’s survey report during a press conference on Monday, Jagannath Chattoapadhyay, the BJP state general secretary, said, “This high rate of rejection shows how many false applications are filed. This is exactly what the central teams had said about the PMAY.”
He claimed that if the government of West Bengal had conducted the survey work for the PMAY correctly, a similar percentage of applications would have been excluded from the list of 45,70,000 sanctioned by the state for the central housing scheme.
“Between 2016-17 and 2022-23, the state completed 3,418,971 houses from the sanctioned applications. These houses were approved arbitrarily without any verification. Applying the same 22.76% rejection rate, approximately 7,78,000 of the 3,418,971 completed houses would be rejected today,” he said.
As a result, Chattopadhyay claimed, Rs 9,400 crores were disbursed to 7,78,000 ineligible applicants. He accused the TMC of "embezzlement of funds" and alleged that the PMAY irregularities were another instance of corruption by West Bengal's ruling party.