RERA aims at long-term changes; shortage of houses more than 10 mn in urban areas, says Hardeep Singh Puri

The conferring of industry status to affordable housing, the insolvency bill and the Goods and Services Tax have created an environment to resolve all the miseries of the real estate sector, Union Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri said at the RICS Real Estate Conference 2017 in New Delhi on Wednesday. “There will be some short-term pain but it will result in a reversal of the current situation. Policy reform measures such as demonetisation and GST will also increase the number of people under taxation,” Puri said at the inaugural session. [caption id=“attachment_1320015” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri. Getty Images[/caption] He said the shortage of houses in urban areas was likely to be over 10 million units and it was being addressed through the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY). The objective was to make available housing for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), Lower Income Groups (LIG) and also the MIG (Middle Income Group) using government land, Puri said. “We have also released various PPP (Public Private Partnership) models to encourage housing through private partnership. Among the distinctive features of this scheme are that government will make available the land and in addition provide a subsidy to each allottee and assist in obtaining easy financing from banks for the remaining sum required,” the minister said. He said the house would be in the name of the lady individually or co-jointly with the male member of the family. “This will help gender empowerment. It will have a kitchen and a toilet and serve to help foster security of the girl child,” Puri said. A revision of the technical study conducted in 2011, which had placed the housing shortage at 18.76 million units in urban areas, found the shortage was around or in excess of 10 million units, he added. The minister said the Real Estate Regulation Act ( RERA ) would have a long-term transformative effect. The act was a response to the dire need of Indian consumers and in the discharge of the sovereign functions towards public interest, he said. “We have put in place an eco-system to ensure that real estate sector is properly governed and buyers are empowered. I have absolutely no doubt that the history of real estate in India will be written in two segments, pre and post RERA ,” the minister said. “The pre-RERA phase was characterised by the dreams and ambitions to own a house of many being dashed for a considerable period of time by a few persons exploiting that dream. We are not out of that phase yet,” Puri said. With inputs from IANS