The Housing Ministry on Tuesday announced it would advance the deadline for delivering one crore houses under PM Awas Yojna (PMAY) in urban areas by almost a period of two years to 2020. Earlier, the central government had set the deadline for PMAY to 2022.

Union Housing Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said that he was confident that sanction for almost all required number of houses would be received by the first quarter of next year and the construction work would be completed by the end of the year, reported The Times of India.

Puri added that more than 81 lakh houses have been sanctioned so far with an investment of Rs 4.83 lakh crore which was out of the validated demand for one crore dwelling units. He asserted that more than 6.32 lakh families have availed interest subsidy under credit-linked subsidy scheme of PMAY.

"We have achieved the progress only by taking states on board unlike the UPA when projects were approved from the Centre. Real practice of Cooperative federalism has worked", said Puri.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter and wrote, "No stone will be left unturned to fulfil the dream of Housing for All, which will give wings to crores of aspirations". PM Modi further stated that his government is committed to improving urban infrastructure while citing that "PMAY (Urban), AMRUT and Smart Cities missions" were launched four years back with the objective of transforming urban landscape.

(Edited by: Nehal Solanki)