Naveen Patnaik govt. to provide house repair assistance in apparent pre-poll sop

Assistance of ₹3,000 or ₹5,000 will be given per family that is eligible under various schemes

In what is being perceived as a pre-election sop, the Naveen Patnaik government in Odisha on Tuesday announced that it will spend ₹1,444 crore towards providing house repair assistance in the range of ₹3,000 to ₹5,000 for every family that is eligible. Panchayat and urban body polls are due in the State early next year.

The State Cabinet has decided that the assistance will be directly transferred to the accounts of beneficiaries.

“We had decided to convert all mud houses to concrete ones in the first Cabinet meeting in 2014. A lot of work has been done in this direction. Odisha is the leading State in construction of houses in rural areas in the country. Since 2014, the State government has spent ₹22,000 crore for rural housing,” said Mr. Patnaik.