PM Modi to unveil 1st batch of precast PMAY houses

NEW DELHI: Barely 16 months after he laid the foundation stone for construction of 1,152 houses in Chennai under the government’s flagship housing scheme, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the first LightHouse Project (LHP) on Thursday. The houses have been built using precast concrete construction technology in a greenfield complex which has 16 towers and each tower has seven floors.
This will be the first LHP under the PM Awas Yojna (PMAY) scheme to be completed out of the six for which Modi had laid the foundation stone in January 2021.In Chennai, the technologies from the United States and Finland have been used for faster construction of houses and also at a cheaper cost. The pilot project has been completed with an expenditure of Rs 116 crore.
The government had set a 12-month timeline for all the six LHPs and had also announced prize money for developers who could complete them before 12 months and within 15 months. Sources said the second wave of Covid-19 impacted the projects and now the remaining projects in Indore, Lucknow, Agaratala and Ranchi are being expedited. The other project in Rajkot with 1,144 houses in a multi-storey complex will also get completed in the next few months, they added.
The housing ministry has installed giant TV screens at its headquarters where live feed from all the six LHPs is available. “The projects are monitored from Nirman Bhawan 24X7 and all 365 days. The beneficiaries for all the under construction houses have got the allotments of the flats in their names. The technologies used in these projects will be used at large scale for faster construction of houses,” said an official.
According to the official status of the projects till April 20, there is 75% progress in the Rajkot project, followed by Indore (61%), Lucknow (53%) and Agartala (37%). A total of 4,208 flats will be built in these five projects.
In an official statement, the government said on Tuesday that Modi will visit Hyderabad and Chennai on Thursday. He will dedicate to the nation and lay the foundation stone of 11 projects worth over Rs 31,400 crore in Chennai. The projects include the LHP at Chennai, railway lines and natural gas pipeline. He will also lay the foundation stone of six projects including the 262 km Bengaluru-Chennai Expressway which will pass through Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and reduce travel time between Bengaluru and Chennai by 2-3 hours.