Biju Pucca Ghar Yojana (BPGY)

What is Biju Pucca Ghar Yojana?

Biju Pucca Ghar Yojana, abbreviated BPGY, is a state plan rural housing scheme of the Government of Odisha, launched in 2014 and administered by the Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water Department. Its objective, in the words of the consolidated guidelines issued in June 2017, is to convert all kutcha houses in rural areas of the state into pucca houses in mission mode.

Biju Pucca Ghar Yojana matters far beyond its own beneficiary numbers, because it became the template for every other state-funded rural house in Odisha. The guidelines for Nirman Shramik Pucca Ghar Yojana say explicitly that anything not spelt out in them applies mutatis mutandis as per the BPGY guidelines, and the mining-area scheme was itself first framed as "BPGY (Mining)". If you understand BPGY, you understand how Odisha builds rural houses.

What the scheme pays. The unit cost for a new pucca house under Biju Pucca Ghar (Special) is Rs 1,20,000 for non-IAP districts and Rs 1,30,000 for IAP districts: IAP being the Integrated Action Plan districts, the state's more backward blocks. On top of the unit cost the beneficiary gets:

• Rs 12,000 for an individual household latrine under MGNREGS or Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin).
• Wage component of 90 person-days in non-IAP districts and 95 person-days in IAP districts under MGNREGS.
• Convergence entitlements, a potable drinking water connection, electrification under DDU-GJY or the Biju Gram Jyoti Yojana, MGNREGS wages for land development, and social security cover.
• An early-completion incentive of Rs 20,000 if the house and latrine are finished within four months of the first instalment, or Rs 10,000 within six months.
• The option of institutional finance up to Rs 70,000 from a bank if the beneficiary chooses it, with state assistance then routed through the same bank account.

What the house must be. The minimum carpet area is 25 square metres including a hygienic cooking space and excluding the toilet, and the roof must be of RCC or another material of equivalent strength approved by the department. The expected life of the structure must be at least 30 years. Crucially, no contractor may be involved. The beneficiary builds the house.

Whose name the house is in. The dwelling unit is sanctioned preferably in the name of the woman head of the household. Where the household is not headed by a woman, allotment can be joint in the names of husband and wife; where there is no female spouse, in the name of the male head. Where the beneficiary is selected under the quota for persons with disabilities, the allotment must be only in the name of that person.

Who is eligible for Biju Pucca Ghar Yojana?

Biju Pucca Ghar Yojana has two components; BPGY (Normal), whose funds cover incentives, awards, IEC and training across the state's rural housing programmes, and BPGY (Special), under which housing units are actually sanctioned to individual households.

Households that can be covered under BPGY (Special):

• Households whose house has been fully or severely damaged by a natural or man-made calamity, fire, flood, cyclone, earthquake, elephant menace, communal violence, left-wing extremist violence, or a major law and order problem — and who need rehabilitation or relocation.
• Victims of river or sea inundation needing relocation, and households rehabilitated or displaced by government projects such as irrigation schemes and roads.
• Beneficiaries under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006.
• People affected by occupational diseases such as silicosis, asbestosis and overuse of pesticides.
• Extremely poor, vulnerable and deserving households who need a pucca house on compassionate grounds but could not be selected under PMAY-Gramin.
• SECC 2011 registered kutcha households, and; importantly; households totally left out or wrongly not registered in the kutcha household category of the SECC list, if field verification finds them living in a kutcha house and the District Level Selection Committee considers them deserving and approves.

A kutcha house, in the scheme's definition, is one whose walls or roof are of un-burnt bricks, bamboo, mud, grass, reeds, thatch or loosely packed stones, and which is not durable.

Who cannot apply or be selected:

• Households already living in a pucca house as defined by the scheme, foundation, wall and roof of permanent material with an expected life of 30 years.
• Households already sanctioned a house under an earlier rural housing scheme. The one carve-out is that households in the calamity and government-displacement categories remain eligible notwithstanding a previous allotment under BPGY, IAY, PMAY-Gramin or any other government scheme.
• Urban households. BPGY is a rural scheme run through Panchayat Samitis.
• Households with no land and no no-objection certificate from a family member whose plot could be used.

How to apply for Biju Pucca Ghar Yojana

Biju Pucca Ghar Yojana is not an application-driven scheme, and this is the single most common misunderstanding about it. There is no online form and no citizen portal registration. Assistance follows from selection, and the route runs like this:

1. Get your household recorded as kutcha. If your name is in the SECC 2011 kutcha household category, you are already in the pool. If your household was left out or wrongly recorded, approach the Gram Panchayat and the Block Development Officer with a written representation and ask for field verification. The guidelines expressly allow such households to be brought in on the strength of verification and District Level Selection Committee approval.
2. Ensure your land papers are in order. The house must be built on your own plot, or on a family member's plot with a no-objection certificate from the land owner. Sort out the Record of Rights at the Tahasil office before selection, because the work order will not issue without it.
3. Wait for the district target and the District Level Committee. The Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water Department fixes the district-wise physical target for the financial year. Selection for BPGY (Special) is done by a District Level Committee chaired by the District Collector, with the Lok Sabha MPs of the district, the MLAs of the district and the Zilla Parishad President as members and the PD DRDA-cum-Executive Officer, Zilla Parishad as member convener. If the Committee does not approve the list within the time the Collector fixes, the Collector approves it himself.
4. Check the published list. The final list is published at the Gram Panchayat and Block headquarters and made available on the DRDA website and the State Rural Housing portal. Verify your name there rather than relying on word of mouth.
5. Complete the pre-work-order formalities. The Block collects your bank account details, Aadhaar UID or EID, mobile number and photograph, and takes geo-tagged photographs of you with your kutcha house and at the proposed construction site. Both photographs are mandatory before the work order can issue.
6. Receive the work order and build. The Panchayat Samiti is the implementing agency, under the supervision of the DRDA and Zilla Parishad, and you build the house yourself with a Block staff member tagged to assist you.

How is the money released and tracked?

Payment under Biju Pucca Ghar Yojana is linked to the stage of construction reached, not to time. Funds are credited to the beneficiary's account by direct account transfer through PFMS from a centralised state-level account; no other form of payment is permitted.

The 2nd, 3rd and 4th instalments must be credited by the BDO within a week of receiving the eye-estimation report, spot verification and geo-tagged photographic evidence of the stage reached. All stage photographs are taken and uploaded through the AwaasApp of the Government of India or the state's own app, and the record is maintained in AwaasSoft and the State Rural Housing Portal, which is also where you or the Block can check progress.

One condition trips people up at the very end: before the fourth instalment is released, the beneficiary must fix the engraved BPGY logo on the front wall of the house showing the beneficiary's name, year of sanction and unit cost.

The house should ordinarily be completed within 12 months of the first instalment reaching the account.

Why do Biju Pucca Ghar cases stall?

• Name not in the SECC 2011 kutcha list, and no field verification done to bring the household in. The fix is a written representation to the BDO seeking verification and placement before the District Level Committee.
• Previous housing benefit on record. The Block cross-checks every name against beneficiaries sanctioned under earlier schemes and deletes duplicates.
• Land title not clear, or no NOC from the family member who owns the plot.
• Stage photographs not uploaded. The next instalment cannot be released until the geo-tagged evidence of the completed stage is in AwaasSoft, so an unrecorded plinth stops the money even though the work is done.
• Roof not of RCC or equivalent. The definition used to verify an existing pucca house is broad, but a house built under the scheme must have an RCC roof or equivalent approved by the department.
• Logo not fixed, holding up the final Rs 30,000.

Where do I complain about a Biju Pucca Ghar problem?

Raise the matter first with the Gram Panchayat and then the Block Development Officer, who sanctions the house, issues the work order and releases every instalment. The Project Director, DRDA is personally responsible at district level and is the right escalation for delay in release, and the District Collector is responsible for proper implementation of the scheme overall. BDOs inspect at least 10 per cent of houses under construction, district-level officers at least 1 per cent and the APD (Rural Housing) 10 per cent of the district's houses, so an inspection record exists to point to.

The Odisha rural housing portal rh.odisha.gov.in publishes a toll-free helpline, 1800-121-9421, and the administrative department is the Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water Department, Government of Odisha, Bhubaneswar 751001, which the guidelines make responsible for clarifying doubts and removing implementation bottlenecks.

Note finally that BPGY no longer appears among the live schemes listed on rh.odisha.gov.in, which now names PMAY-Gramin, PM-JANMAN, Antyodaya Gruha Yojana, Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining) and Nirman Shramik Pucca Ghar Yojana. If you are a kutcha household seeking a house today, ask the Block office specifically about Antyodaya Gruha Yojana, which is described on the same portal as covering eligible households left out of the ongoing housing schemes, victims of natural or man-made calamities, and households displaced by development projects.