PMAY-G survey to use ‘face recognition’ tools to identify new beneficiaries

A fresh survey to identify a minimum of eight million new beneficiaries of the flagship rural housing scheme, in addition to the 12 million already identified, will use the latest face-recognition tools to minimise gaps, a senior official said on Tuesday.

Photograph: Sunil Kataria/Reuters

The survey, which has already started across the country for building the fresh 20 million new rural houses over the next five years, can also be done by the beneficiary himself/herself as well through the Awaassoft mobile application specially created for this purpose.

“Self-survey can be done only once through any one mobile device so that there is no duplication or mistake,” a senior government official said.

First time beneficiaries will get priority in the new survey.

The official was speaking to a select group of reporters on the completion of eight years of the flagship rural housing scheme of the Narendra Modi government — the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin (PMAY-G).

The scheme was formally launched on November 20, 2016 by Prime Minister Modi from Agra.

So far, under the scheme, around 29.5 million houses have been sanctioned, out of which around 27 million have already been constructed.

Recently, after the Modi government assumed office for the third successive term in June 2024, approval for an additional 20 million houses was given.

These would be completed over the next five years, out of which the target for 2024-25 is 3.8 million units.

The beneficiaries were initially identified through the Socio-Economic Caste Census of 2011.

Thereafter, another survey called Awasplus was done in 2018 to fill the gaps.

The second Awasplus survey has now been started to meet the new target of 20 million rural houses over the next five years.

The official said that their are around 20 out of the 34 states where total saturation in delivery of rural houses have been completed as per the two previous lists of SECC-2011 and first Awasplus survey.

The survey, officials said, has been so tailored that 100 per cent houses are sanctioned to either women or joint holders. In the first part of PMAY-G, almost 74 per cent of the houses have been either in the names of women beneficiaries or joint owners.

The unit amount for construction of each house has been kept at Rs 120,000 for plains and Rs 130,000 for hills just as the first PMAY-G.

In convergence with schemes such as MGNREGA and Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin, this ensures another Rs 40,000 is passed on to the beneficiary.

“There was a proposal to hike the per-unit assistance but it was dropped as it was found that beneficiaries themselves were putting in a lot of money in building their own houses,” another official remarked.

The exclusion criteria for the next 20 million houses have also been brought down to 10 from the current 13 for the first lot of houses.