Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining)

What is Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining)?

Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining) is a rural housing scheme of the Government of Odisha that exists for one purpose: to convert every kutcha house in the state's mining-affected blocks into a pucca house. It was notified by a resolution of the Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water Department dated 31 May 2018 and is also referred to in departmental papers as BPGY (Mining), because it was framed on the Biju Pucca Ghar Yojana template.

Two things make Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining) different from every other rural housing scheme in Odisha.

First, it runs on saturation mode. In the notified blocks, all kutcha households are to be assisted, not a target-limited slice of them. That is why the guidelines contain no district quota and no selection committee: only an exclusion list.

Second, it is not funded from the state budget. Money comes from mineral revenue meant for the areas mining has affected: the Odisha Mineral Bearing Areas Development Corporation (OMBADC), which operates under the Steel & Mines Department, funds 30 of the 36 blocks, while District Mineral Foundations (DMF) fund the remaining six blocks: Champua, Keonjhar Sadar, Dasamantpur, Narayanpatna, Semiliguda and Tiring, with the Collector crediting DMF money to the State Nodal Account maintained by the PR&DW Department.

What the scheme pays. The unit cost for a new pucca house is Rs 1,20,000 for non-IAP districts and Rs 1,30,000 for IAP districts, revisable by the State Government. In addition a beneficiary gets:

• Rs 12,000 for an individual household latrine (IHHL).
• 90 person-days of MGNREGS wages in non-IAP districts and 95 person-days in IAP districts.
• Convergence for a potable drinking water supply, electrification under DDU-GJY or the Biju Gram Jyoti Yojana, MGNREGS wages for land development and social security cover.
• An incentive of Rs 20,000 for completing the house and latrine within 4 months of the first instalment, or Rs 10,000 within 6 months.

What the house must be. Minimum carpet area 25 square metres including a hygienic cooking space and excluding the toilet; roof mandatorily of RCC or equivalent strength approved by the PR&DW Department; expected structural life at least 30 years; and no contractor involved, since houses are built by the beneficiaries themselves with the Panchayat Samiti as implementing agency.

Whose name the house is in. Allotment is made preferably in the name of the female head of the household; jointly to husband and wife where the household is not female-headed; to the male head where there is no female spouse; and only in the name of the person with disability where the beneficiary is a person with disabilities.

Which blocks does Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining) cover?

The scheme applies to 36 blocks across 9 mining-affected districts:

The department's rural housing portal describes the coverage in village terms; 691 mining-affected villages across eight districts, listing Angul, Dhenkanal, Jajpur, Jharsuguda, Keonjhar, Koraput, Mayurbhanj and Sundargarh. The 2018 resolution names nine districts, including Rayagada. If your village sits near the edge of a listed block, ask the Block office whether it is on the notified village list before assuming coverage either way.

Who is eligible for Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining)?

Households that can be covered:

• Any household living in a kutcha house in one of the 36 notified mining-affected blocks. A kutcha house is defined as one whose walls or roof are of un-burnt bricks, bamboo, mud, grass, reeds, thatch or loosely packed stones and is not durable.
• A household for this purpose means the person and his or her spouse, minor sons, unmarried daughters, minor brothers or unmarried sisters, father, mother and other members residing with and dependent on him or her.
• Each of the following is treated as a separate household in its own right, a major son irrespective of marital status; an unmarried daughter or sister above 30 years of age; a person with more than 40 per cent permanent disability duly certified by the authorised medical board, whether blind, deaf, orthopaedically handicapped or mentally challenged, irrespective of age and sex; a minor orphan who has lost both parents; and a widow or woman divorcee.
• A beneficiary already allotted a house under any scheme whose house was washed away, fully damaged or fully collapsed due to landslide, elephant menace, earthquake, flood or cyclone will also get a house under this scheme.

Households that are not eligible:

• Households already sanctioned a house under any of the rural housing schemes — the exclusion the BDO checks first, and the reason most names are struck off the survey list.
• Households already living in a pucca house, as verified in the field.
• Households in blocks outside the notified 36, however close to a mine they may be.

If you are landless, you are not excluded. Where a household is staying by unauthorised occupation of land, the Collector takes steps to distribute a house site under the Revenue laws and the Forest Rights Act. Where no suitable leasable government land is available in nearby localities, the eligible beneficiary is given financial assistance at the benchmark valuation of that area to purchase private land: assistance for land purchase is a named component of the scheme fund.

How to apply for Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining)

Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining) has no citizen application form. Identification is by survey, and the practical route for a household is to make sure the survey finds you and that your papers are ready when it does.

1. The BDO conducts a survey. The Block Development Officer conducts a survey through field functionaries to ascertain eligible households residing in the Block area. If your hamlet has not been surveyed, raise it with the Gram Panchayat and the BDO in writing and ask for inclusion: saturation mode means there is no target to compete for.
2. The list is cross-verified. The list of eligible households is verified against beneficiaries sanctioned houses earlier under any scheme, and those names are deleted. Thereafter the BDO sanctions houses to the eligible beneficiaries.
3. Numbers flow up. The BDO intimates the number of eligible households to the DRDA; the PD, DRDA communicates the district figure to the PR&DW Department; and the Department sets the online target in AwaasSoft or the state's own software so that the BDO can sanction houses.
4. Keep your papers ready. The BDO obtains from each eligible household a copy of the Record of Rights, a declaration that the household lives in a kutcha house and will build on its recorded land, a copy of the bank account to be credited, a photograph, the Aadhaar UID or EID and a mobile number, all filed in the case record opened for the beneficiary.
5. Geo-tagged photographs are captured. Before the work order issues, a geo-tagged photograph of the beneficiary in front of the kutcha house and another on the proposed site of construction must be taken.
6. The BDO issues the work order to every eligible beneficiary, and the first instalment is released along with it.
7. Build the house yourself within the 12-month timeline, choosing from the basket of house designs and technologies offered, with a Block staff member tagged to you for facilitation.

Where the beneficiary is a senior citizen, infirm, destitute or a person with disability who cannot bear the strain of supervising construction and asks in writing for support, the house can be taken up as part of the mason training programme or entrusted to a reputed agency with the Collector's approval.

How is the money released and tracked?

Release is linked to the level of construction reached, and funds are credited by direct account transfer through PFMS or e-FMS from a centralised state-level account. The PR&DW Department opens a scheduled commercial bank account in the name of "Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining)", into which OMBADC and the Collectors credit money from OMBADC funds and DMF respectively.

The 2nd, 3rd and 4th instalments are credited by the BDO within a week of receiving the eye-estimation, spot verification and geo-tagged photographic evidence of the stage reached: captured by the official tagged to the beneficiary, an identified youth of the Gram Panchayat, or the beneficiary personally, through the AwaasApp or the state's Ama Ghar App.

Progress is monitored through AwaasSoft, the State Rural Housing Portal and the PR&DW Department's Dashboard Monitoring System, and BDOs are required to keep that data current, which is why an unposted stage photograph, rather than an unfinished wall, is often what is actually holding up a payment.

Houses should ordinarily be completed within 12 months of the first instalment reaching the account. A beneficiary who wants a bigger house is advised to first complete the core house of at least 25 square metres and extend later.

Up to 4 per cent of the allocated fund is kept as an Administrative Contingency Fund, which pays for material supply logistics, transport of building material to remote pockets, mason training and certification, geo-tagging devices, habitat and housing literacy for beneficiaries, and incentives for green construction materials.

Why do Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining) cases stall?

• Earlier housing sanction on record. This is the first check the BDO makes, and a house sanctioned years ago under IAY, BPGY or PMAY-Gramin removes the name.
• House found pucca on verification, even where the household considers it kutcha. The roof material generally decides it.
• Household missed by the survey. There is no form to file, so an unsurveyed hamlet simply does not appear. A written representation to the BDO is the fix.
• Land not recorded, or no NOC. The house must be on the beneficiary's plot or a family member's plot with a no-objection certificate from the co-shareholders of the land.
• Stage evidence not uploaded, which freezes the next instalment.
• Village not on the notified list, even within a listed district. Only the 36 notified blocks are covered.

Where do I complain about a Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining) problem?

The Block Development Officer owns the survey, the sanction, the work order and every instalment, so start there. Above him the PD, DRDA is responsible at district level and the District Collector must ensure proper implementation of the scheme, and the Collector matters especially here, because land distribution for the landless and DMF funding both run through his office.

The guidelines build in an inspection trail you can invoke: BDOs inspect at least 10 per cent of houses under construction, district-level officers at least 1 per cent, and the APD (Rural Housing) at least 5 per cent of the district's houses.

The state rural housing portal rh.odisha.gov.in publishes a toll-free helpline, 1800-121-9421. Where doubt arises about the initiation or implementation of the project, the resolution says the matter may be referred to the Government in the Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water Department, Bhubaneswar 751001, whose decision is final.

No fee is payable at any stage, and since the guidelines forbid contractors outright, anyone offering to "arrange" a Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining) house for money has nothing to sell.

How to check your application status

Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining) has no application receipt to track because there is no citizen application: your case record is opened by the Block once the survey finds you, so "checking status" here means checking where your case sits in the survey-to-instalment pipeline, not tracking a submitted form.

1. Ask the Block office for your survey and sanction status first. The BDO's office holds the survey list, the sanction order and the case record for every eligible household, so this is the fastest way to know whether you have been surveyed, whether your name survived the cross-verification against earlier housing sanctions, and whether a work order has been issued.
2. Check the State Rural Housing Portal. The Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water Department runs its rural housing data on rh.odisha.gov.in, which draws from AwaasSoft and the Department's Dashboard Monitoring System. Beneficiary and house-wise progress reported by Blocks is visible here at the district and Block level; ask the Gram Panchayat or Block staff tagged to you to help locate your entry if the portal's public search does not surface it directly by name.
3. Track instalment credit through your bank account. Since money moves by direct account transfer through PFMS or e-FMS, a credited instalment shows up as a bank transaction from the state-level "Pucca Ghar Yojana (Mining)" account. If an instalment is overdue, the likely hold-up is an unposted stage photograph (plinth, roof level, or completion) rather than a rejected claim, since the next instalment is released only after the BDO verifies the geo-tagged evidence.
4. Check whether your stage photograph was actually uploaded. Progress photographs are captured through the AwaasApp or the state's Ama Ghar App by the official tagged to you, an identified Gram Panchayat youth, or yourself. If a wall is finished but the photograph was never uploaded to the app, the system still shows the earlier stage, so ask the tagged official to confirm the upload before assuming your file has stalled elsewhere.
5. Call the toll-free helpline for a status update. The number published on the state rural housing portal is 1800-121-9421. Have your name, Block, Gram Panchayat and, if allotted, your beneficiary or case ID ready when you call.
6. Escalate to the PD, DRDA or the District Collector if the Block gives no answer. Both are accountable for implementation at district level, and since land distribution for landless beneficiaries and DMF fund flow both route through the Collector's office, a stuck case involving land or fund availability is often resolved faster there than at Block level.

No fee applies to any status check, and nobody outside the BDO's office, DRDA, Collector or the helpline can genuinely tell you where your case stands.