The Housing and Urban Development Department today made it clear that only permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir, having land in their own name, are to be covered under Housing for All (HFA) and National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM).Responding to a news report published in a section of the press regarding construction of shelters for floating population in the State, a spokesman of Housing & Urban Development Department said the Commissioner/Secretary, H&UDD has been misunderstood and misquoted with regard to implementation of HFA and NULM in the State. The spokesman said it has been clarified time and again that ownership of land is one of the mandatory requirements for availing benefits under HFA scheme.
“As far as NULM is concerned, one of the components of the mission is setting up of ‘shelters for homeless,” he said and added these shelters are meant to provide temporary stay facilities to the floating population who are homeless.“It is reiterated that the ownership rights of shelters to be provided under NULM shall remain with the state government and people without shelters can only use the facilities on payment of user charges as may be fixed by the state government from time to time,” he said.The spokesman also said that the Commissioner Secretary H&UDD has been completely misquoted in the said news report that the government was also working on the scheme to provide ownership of land to Pakistani refugees residing in Jammu.“It is vehemently denied that Commissioner Secretary H&UDD spoke on the subject,” he said and added that the issue came up when one of the officers raised the issue before the Executive Director, National Housing Board (NHB), during a workshop at SKICC on 16 May 2016, that whether these refugees will be provided assistance under credit linked subsidy scheme (CLSS). “In a reply, the Executive Director National Housing Bank, Mr Sanjeev Sharma said that assistance shall be provided strictly under state laws and one of the conditions for providing loans/under CLSS shall be the ownership of the land,” he said.