Tribal Affairs Ministry clears speedier sanctioning of homes under PM-JANMAN package for vulnerable tribes

Ministry of Tribal Affairs streamlines housing sanctioning process for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups under PM-JANMAN package.

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs has now cleared the way for speedier sanctioning of homes for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups across India under its PM-JANMAN package, after it was flagged that maintaining data sanctity through the PM-GatiShakti portal was taking too much time, resulting in line ministries not being able to sanction the projects in time.

The PM-JANMAN package, launched in November 2023, intends to achieve 100% saturation of basic schemes like housing, piped water, roads, etc. across habitations of PVTG populations. Under the housing component, a target has been set to sanction and build 4.90 lakh PM-AWAS homes to PVTGs under the package.  

The Tribal Affairs Ministry this month issued a communication to the Rural Development Ministry and State and UT governments, noting that an issue had been flagged with the standard method for sanctioning the homes, which was causing delays, sources aware of the scheme’s progress told The Hindu.  

Under this method, each district is required to upload exact details of the place, the village, the village code, and number of beneficiaries that require PM-AWAS home on the PM-GatiShakti portal, which is monitored by the respective line ministries and supervised by the Tribal Affairs Ministry.  

This method has ensured data perfection for the government and has allowed the Tribal Affairs Ministry to play its role as the nodal ministry, but it was taking too much time for this process to be completed, the ministry has noted, clarifying to the Rural Development Ministry and the States that housing units can also be sanctioned through the government’s PM-AWAS portal.  

One source added that this allowed the government to reach its sanction targets but also made room for the officials to keep updating the data on the PM-GatiShakti portal albeit with a little bit of delay.  

According to official data, a total of around 3.3 lakh homes had been sanctioned for PVTG populations until November 2024. Officials noted that since the clarification from the Tribal Affairs Ministry, nearly one lakh more homes had been sanctioned, with the currently the number of sanctioned homes crossing 4 lakh. However, officials noted that 80,000 homes had been completed.