PMAY-U In-Situ Slum Redevelopment (ISSR)

What was PMAY-U In-Situ Slum Redevelopment?

In-Situ Slum Redevelopment (ISSR) was one of the four verticals of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana - Urban (PMAY-U) under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. ISSR answered a specific problem: slums usually sit on valuable city land, and moving residents to cheap land on the outskirts destroys their access to work, schools and transport. ISSR instead rebuilt housing on the same land.

According to the PMAY-Urban portal, ISSR was described as "slum redevelopment using land as a resource with private participation", and it provided a slum rehabilitation grant of Rs 1 lakh per house on average for slums on central, state or urban local body land.

ISSR was not continued as a separate vertical under PMAY-U 2.0. Ministry officials attributed the decision to a muted response from states. Slum households under PMAY-U 2.0 are covered through the Beneficiary Led Construction and Affordable Housing in Partnership verticals, with slum dwellers explicitly named among the priority groups.

How did the ISSR model work?

ISSR was not a cash scheme and not an individual entitlement. It was a project model:

1. The state government or Urban Local Body identified a notified slum on public land and surveyed the households living there.
2. A private developer was appointed through a transparent bidding process.
3. The developer built pucca flats on part of the plot for the eligible residents, free to them, and was allowed to develop and sell the remaining part commercially.
4. To make the arithmetic work, the state offered the developer additional Floor Space Index (FSI) or Floor Area Ratio (FAR), or Transferable Development Rights (TDR), or permitted land monetisation.
5. The Rs 1 lakh per house central grant topped up the developer's revenue. States and cities could use the grant flexibly across several slums in the city rather than being restricted to one.

For slums on privately owned land, no central financial assistance was available. States and cities instead offered FSI/FAR or TDR concessions to the landowner as per their own policy.

Who was eligible under ISSR, and who was not eligible?

A household was covered if:

• The family lived in a notified slum taken up for redevelopment, on the cut-off date fixed by the state government for that project.
• The beneficiary family; husband, wife and unmarried children: was recorded in the slum survey and appeared on the published beneficiary list.
• No member of the family owned a pucca house anywhere in India. This is the standard PMAY-U condition and applied to ISSR too.
• The family had not already received central housing assistance under any government housing scheme.

Who could not apply:

• Individuals cannot apply for ISSR at all. There is no personal application form and never was one. Eligibility flows from being surveyed and listed in a redevelopment project that the state and ULB decided to take up.
• Families that moved into the slum after the cut-off date for the project were not eligible for a rehabilitation flat.
• Families owning a pucca house elsewhere in India, or that had already drawn central housing assistance, were not eligible.
• Residents of slums that were never taken up for a project got nothing under this vertical, however poor their housing. This was the vertical's central weakness and part of the reason it was dropped.
• No one can apply for ISSR today, since the vertical is not part of PMAY-U 2.0.

How to apply now that ISSR has closed

There is no ISSR application. A slum household seeking housing assistance in 2026 should apply under PMAY-U 2.0, where slum dwellers are a priority group.

1. Work out which vertical fits you. If your family owns the land or holds a recognised title to the plot under your kutcha structure, apply under Beneficiary Led Construction (BLC). If you own no land, apply under Affordable Housing in Partnership (AHP), which provides a built flat.
2. Go to pmaymis.gov.in and open the PMAY-U 2.0 section, or visit a Common Service Centre or your Urban Local Body office for assisted filing.
3. Complete Aadhaar-based eKYC for the applicant and enter Aadhaar details of your spouse and unmarried children.
4. Fill the application form with your address, household income, bank account and, for BLC — your land details.
5. Upload documents, proof of residence, income proof or self-declaration, bank passbook, and the self-declaration that no family member owns a pucca house anywhere in India.
6. Submit and keep the application number shown on screen for tracking.
7. Take part in the slum survey if your Urban Local Body announces one. A household not recorded in the survey will not appear on any slum redevelopment or rehabilitation list, whatever else it has filed.
8. Track your application on pmaymis.gov.in using the application number, name or Aadhaar.

What documents do slum households need?

What residents should check before consenting to a redevelopment project

Slum redevelopment involves signing consent documents, so it is worth checking these points with the Urban Local Body in writing before signing anything:

• Your name on the beneficiary list and the cut-off date used for the survey.
• The carpet area of the flat you are being offered and the floor.
• Transit arrangements; whether you will be given transit accommodation or paid transit rent, at what rate and for how long.
• The completion timeline and what happens if the developer stalls.
• Maintenance charges payable after possession, which many families are not warned about.
• Restrictions on sale of the rehabilitated flat, which most states impose for a fixed number of years.

Consent given under pressure, or to an agent rather than to the ULB, is the most common way slum families lose their claim.

Where ISSR sits in the PMAY-Urban picture

PMAY-Urban 1.0 ran four verticals, ISSR, Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme, AHP and BLC. Two of them are now closed: CLSS stopped taking new applications on 31 March 2022, and ISSR was not carried into PMAY-U 2.0. PMAY-U 2.0, approved by the Union Cabinet in August 2024 for 2024 to 2029, runs BLC, AHP, Affordable Rental Housing and the Interest Subsidy Scheme, with a target of assisting one crore urban poor and middle-class families.

Across the whole mission, roughly 172.72 lakh houses have been sanctioned, 121.15 lakh grounded and 99.25 lakh completed, with about Rs 1.81 lakh crore of central assistance released, according to the mission dashboard.

Where to get help

• PMAY-U helpline: 011-23060484, 011-23063620
• Email: pmayumis-support@gov.in
• Portals: pmay-urban.gov.in for scheme information, pmaymis.gov.in to apply under PMAY-U 2.0 and to search the beneficiary list
• Urban Local Body / municipality slum cell for survey lists, cut-off dates, project details and transit arrangements
• Mobile apps: PMAY Urban App and BharatHFA

Applying under PMAY-U is free. No developer, agent or middleman can charge a slum household a fee for inclusion in a survey or a beneficiary list, and no official will ask for your OTP.

How to check your application status

ISSR itself has no individual application, so there is no ISSR status to track. A slum household that has since applied under PMAY-U 2.0 (BLC or AHP) can check progress through these channels:

1. Online, on pmaymis.gov.in. Open the "Citizen Assessment" or "Track your Assessment Status" option, and search using your application/assessment ID. If you did not save the ID, most states allow a search by Aadhaar number or by name plus father's/husband's name and state, district and city.
2. Beneficiary list search. Because ISSR-era claims and current BLC/AHP claims both run through a slum survey and a published beneficiary list, check whether your household name appears on the beneficiary list published by your Urban Local Body, separately from the online portal status.
3. PMAY Urban mobile app or BharatHFA app. Both let a registered applicant log in and view the current stage of the assessment: submitted, under verification, approved, or fund release, without needing to visit an office.
4. Helpline call. Call the PMAY-U helpline at 011-23060484 or 011-23063620 with your application ID ready; the helpline can confirm which stage a case is at but cannot change or expedite it.
5. Urban Local Body / municipality slum cell, in person. For anything tied to a slum survey rather than an individual portal application, such as your position on a beneficiary list, the cut-off date used, or transit housing allotment, the ULB slum cell holds the records, not the national portal. Carry your slum survey number or earlier acknowledgment when you visit.
6. Email follow-up. If online status has not moved for several weeks, write to pmayumis-support@gov.in with the application ID, name, and address, and ask for a written status update rather than relying on a phone call alone.

Because the ISSR vertical itself is closed, an applicant who is still being told to "wait for ISSR" by a local intermediary should treat that as a red flag: no ISSR assessment is being processed anywhere in the country any more, and the correct route is a fresh BLC or AHP application under PMAY-U 2.0.

Common reasons for rejection

Since housing assistance for former slum residents now runs through BLC or AHP rather than ISSR, most rejections seen today happen at the PMAY-U 2.0 assessment stage or at the slum-survey stage feeding into it. The recurring reasons, and the fix for each, are:

• A family member already owns a pucca house anywhere in India. This is checked against land and property records, not just the applicant's self-declaration, and is the single most common ground for rejection. Fix: verify with all listed family members, including married-out daughters if they are still counted in the household record in some states, before applying, rather than after a rejection.
• The household is missing from the slum survey or beneficiary list. A family that was never surveyed, or that moved into the slum after the cut-off date fixed for that project, will not appear on any list, however genuine its need. Fix: confirm your name is recorded when the ULB conducts or updates a slum survey, and get a written acknowledgment or survey number at that time.
• Aadhaar details do not match across family members. Mismatched names, spellings or missing Aadhaar for a spouse or unmarried child can stall or reject an assessment during eKYC. Fix: correct the Aadhaar record at an Aadhaar Seva Kendra before reapplying, rather than submitting with the mismatch.
• Duplicate or overlapping claims within the same family. If more than one member of the same household separately files for assistance, the system flags this as a duplicate claim. Fix: file one consolidated household application, naming all eligible members correctly the first time.
• Prior receipt of central housing assistance. A family that already benefited under an earlier PMAY-U vertical, Indira Awaas Yojana, or another central housing scheme is not eligible again. Fix: check your own household's housing-scheme history before filing; this cannot be appealed around, only avoided by not reapplying.
• Income proof inconsistent with the declared category. For EWS assessment under BLC or AHP, an income certificate or self-declaration that does not match the category claimed (or conflicts with other records such as ration card category) can cause rejection. Fix: obtain a current income certificate from the competent authority rather than relying on an old one, and declare a category consistent with it.
• Missing or unclear title documents for BLC. BLC requires the applicant to hold the land or a recognised title to the plot under an existing kutcha structure; unclear, disputed, or undocumented land status is a frequent reason BLC claims stall. Fix: if title is unclear, apply instead under AHP, which does not require the applicant to own land, rather than pursuing a BLC claim on disputed land.
• Application filed through an unauthorised agent or with a fee paid. Applications routed through a middleman promising faster approval for a fee are frequently the ones that go missing or get flagged; there is no legitimate fee for a PMAY-U application at any stage. Fix: apply directly at pmaymis.gov.in, at a Common Service Centre, or at the Urban Local Body office, and report anyone demanding payment.

A rejected or stalled case can usually be corrected and resubmitted once the specific defect above is fixed; it is worth asking the ULB or the helpline for the exact stated reason for rejection in writing rather than reapplying blind.