Today (20 November), Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Pradhanmantri Grameen Awas Yojna in Agra.
This bold housing scheme is expected to provide affordable houses to all those living below the poverty line, by the year 2022.
The Prime Minister also addressed a large gathering in the afternoon. Some of the notable highlights from his speech are as follows:
- When the nation will celebrate 75 years of independence in 2022, the poorest of Indians must have their own home.
- Previously, one never knew who MNREGA helped. Now we have said, if a family builds their own home, it too will come under MNREGA.
- These houses will have electricity and gas connections.
- This government is dedicated to the poor. Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana was started so that the poor can have a bank account, Aadhaar so that they get what is their right.
- We launched Ujjwala Yojana so that poor mothers do not have to breathe the smoke of wood and coal, and instead get to cook with gas stoves.
- 18,000 villages, even 70 years after independence, were living in the eighteenth century, without electricity. In 1,000 days, we will bring them out of darkness. Most of the villages were in Uttar Pradesh. 95 per cent work has been completed.
- Dalits, adivasi, farmers and mothers – everybody is facing hardships. Their sacrifices will not go to waste.
- Cities that had difficulty in collecting Rs 5 crore in bills started getting Rs 15 crore in payments. Who had not paid those bills? The middle class? No.
- More than Rs 5 lakh crore has been deposited in banks.
- Tell me, does any poor or middle class person have black money? But, when a middle-class person wants to buy a house, the seller wants Rs 3 lakh in cash. Then, the poor guy has to turn his white money to black.
- The middle class will not be exploited; the poor will get what is their right.
- The banks – which have collected Rs 5 lakh crore – will have to pump it back in the market.
- The corrupt are cleverly trying to deposit their money through Jan Dhan Yojana accounts. Please don’t allow that.