Proceedings of the Lok Sabha underway during the Budget Session of Parliament on March 12, 2025.
| Photo Credit: ANI
A Parliamentary Standing Committee has advised the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to hold consultations with stakeholders, and prepare documents and guidelines to schemes prior to announcing them in Budgets.
“This would avoid allocation and parking of funds for such schemes wherein approvals would spill to subsequent financial years,” the report on Demand for Grants of the Standing Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs said.
The committee made the recommendation with respect to two schemes announced in this year’s Budget — ‘Urban Challenge Fund’ and ‘Scheme for Industrial Housing’ with allocations of ₹10,000 crore and ₹2,500 crore, respectively.
It also referred back to two earlier schemes announced by the Ministry — a public bus transport scheme that was announced in the 2021-22 Budget and approved by the Centre in August 2023 as PM-eBus Sewa Scheme along with the National Urban Digital Mission (NUDM), which was announced as a new scheme in the July 2024 Budget with an allocation of ₹1,150 crore for financial year 2024-25.
While the funds under the PM-eBus Sewa Scheme were for the first time actually spent during the financial year 2024-25, the NUDM has not yet received Cabinet approval.
“The funds allocated thus remained unutilised,” the report tabled in Parliament on Wednesday (March 12, 2025) said.
In this year’s Budget, the government announced the Urban Challenge Fund of ₹1 lakh crore to implement the proposals for ‘Cities as Growth Hubs’, ‘Creative Redevelopment of Cities’ and ‘Water and Sanitation’ in the Union Budget.
The Scheme for Industrial Housing was also announced in the Budget. It aims to address the need for workers’ accommodation, through a rental housing scheme facilitated through public-private partnerships (PPP) with Viability Gap Funding (VGF) support.
On being asked to provide the detailed eligibility criteria for the cities and the procedure for applying for the funding under the ‘Urban Challenge Fund’, the Ministry stated to the committee: “The matter is under examination to decide upon the mode and method for selection of cities under the Urban Challenge Fund.”
For the Scheme for Industrial Housing, the Ministry was asked to furnish the details of the proposed scheme and how the proposed allocation of ₹2,500 crore will be utilised.
The Ministry said: “For this purpose, a scheme will be designed in consultation with stakeholders.”
The panel recommended that the Ministry of Urban Affairs should ensure that funds for both ‘Urban Challenge Fund’ and ‘Scheme for Industrial Housing’ are designed and guidelines prepared at the earliest and all the approvals are sought without any delay so as to ensure that ₹10,000 crore and ₹2,500 crore, respectively, allocated for these two schemes in the Budget 2025-26 are utilised within this financial year.
Published – March 13, 2025 10:24 pm IST
