Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna (PMAY) through video conference on Tuesday. While addressing he said that the use of latest technology is ensuring faster building of houses for the poor in rural and urban areas at affordable cost. Modi also said that the current focus was to ensure more women, 'divyang' (differently-abled), people from SC, ST, OBC and minority communities get access to housing.

He added that the government was working towards ensuring that every Indian has a home by 2022, when India will celebrate its 75 years of Independence.

Under the PMAY, the government plans to build around three crore houses in rural areas and one crore houses in urban areas. Enlisting the benefits his government has provided to home-buyers in the last four years Modi mentioned the following points.

Modi said that the government has so far given sanctions to build more than 47 lac houses in urban areas, which is four times more than the sanctions given by the previous government in 10 years. For rural areas, he said that sanctions have been given to build more than one crore houses as compared to 25 lac sanctions by the previous government in its last 4 years.

The government has also been able to reduce the time needed to build a house from 18 months to 12 months, thereby saving about 6 months. Adding that the size of houses built has been increased to 25 square metre from 20 square metres.

The financial assistance for the scheme has also been enhanced up to ₹1,25,000 from the earlier allocation of ₹70,000 - ₹75,000.