Urban News

The Chandigarh Housing Board (CHB) is likely to get an additional grant of Rs 99 crore from the Union Ministry of Housing to fulfil the next phase of the slum rehabilitation project in the city. A meeting in this regard is scheduled between officials of the CHB and the Housing Ministry’s Central Monitoring and Sanctioning Committee at New Delhi.

Revealing the details, Chandigarh Housing Board Chairman Mohanjit Singh said, “We are hopeful of getting the grant from the Ministry on Tuesday. Once we get the requisite amount of money, the slum rehabilitation project will definitely pick up pace.”

The CHB has already requested the Chandigarh Administration to give a matching grant of another Rs 99 crore from the normal budgetary process so that the slum rehabilitation project can be carried out smoothly, without any major roadblocks.

The Chandigarh Housing Board ran into a severe financial crunch after the multi-crore Prideasia project hit a road block. CHB was to earn several hundred crore rupees from the project, which were to be pumped into the slum rehabilitation project, according to the original plan.

The Union government had planned to allocate a total of Rs 396 crore to the Chandigarh Housing Board for completing one phase of the slum rehabilitation project.

Under the slum rehabilitation scheme, inhabitants of various colonies and slums, which had come up as parts of encroachment on government land, are rehabilitated in the newly constructed flats in the southern sectors of the city.

Of the total amount, the CHB had already received Rs 233 crore, which were utilised in construction of flats under the slum rehabilitation project. The project, which is almost half way through, is yet to undertake construction of nearly 12,000 more flats under the scheme.