Incidentally, PM Modi laid the foundation stone for these six projects in a virtual event on January 1, 2021. The project in Chennai was readied in May 2022 while the Rajkot LHP was completed in October 2022. The construction in Indore took another year to complete, ending in October 2023. The project in Ranchi is likely to be finished by end-April, officials said, and 10 beneficiaries were given their house keys in the virtual presence of the PM.

The stated aim of the lighthouse projects

Other than being fast-tracked, these projects were planned to be environment-friendly, with a reduced carbon footprint and greater resilience against extreme climatic events and natural disasters, such as earthquakes. Officials said that all six prefab techniques are known to save 30% water compared to the traditional stick-built brick-and-mortar construction, besides reducing construction time by half. But now, in mid-March 2024, beneficiaries of two of these six projects – in Ranchi and Agartala – are yet to see possession.

It will likely take another year to finish the work in Agartala, an official of the Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC), said. BMPTC is an autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) that was tasked with supervising these LHPs.

A senior official at the Centre for Urbanization, Buildings & Environment (CUBE) at IIT Madras, who was involved in the third-party quality assessment of these LHPs, said that the [] availability of prefab materials and lack of trained manpower were factors behind these projects getting delayed.

What caused delays in Ranchi and Agartala?

The BMPTC official said the ongoing delay for Agartala is partially due to the remote location of Tripura. “The prefab material is coming from Maharashtra and often the roads going to Tripura are damaged, leading to delays. Even zone 4 sand and coarse aggregate which is required for construction is not available in Tripura and needs to be transported from Assam,” he said. There has been a lack of adequate follow-up by the state and union government with the contractor to ensure steady progress of the project, the official alleged. Instead, he said, officials readily accepted whatever was cited by the contractor. “This is a RERA (Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act) approved project. If the beneficiaries approach RERA, then there might be some urgency,” he added. Section 18 of the RERA Act has provisions for penalising builders for delayed construction.

Incidentally, in the 20th project monitoring committee meeting held on January 4, which was headed by MoHUA joint secretary Kuldip Narayan, it was noted that the progress of the work in Agartala was unsatisfactory. In the meeting minutes, Narayan instructed the construction agency to plan their work such that it be completed before the onset of the monsoon in 2025.

A State Urban Development Agency official in Lucknow said that the construction delay was due to the lockdown imposed during the third wave of COVID-19, and the unavailability of materials which had to be imported from China. “If there was no COVID, even in Lucknow the construction could have been completed within 15-16 months,” he said.

In Ranchi, the project had a delayed start. The construction could not begin in the first place due to protests by the residents of a local slum, who had opposed the project as the land meant for the construction was used as a playground and for other common amenities. Further, in mid-2023 there was an incident of part of an under-construction building collapsing, which led to protests by the beneficiaries seeking a refund on their payments.

Were LHPs the right approach?

Veteran Mumbai architect and social housing activist PK Das said only a handful of companies have the necessary trained supervisory staff who can carry out the construction with prefab, as they require much better planning and skilled execution. “It’s not surprising that these delays are more in these PMAY projects,” he said. Instead, these social housing should have been planned as high-density low rises, where buildings are not higher than seven stories to be most efficient in terms of construction and upkeep costs, environmental considerations, and social impact, he said. “With some tree cover, these buildings are not only financially optimal but they are also built faster and have minimal heat island effect when we are facing an existential threat from climate change,” he said, questioning the wisdom in importing technologies from elsewhere without taking into account modern global best practices and logistical issues.

As mentioned by Das, the buildings in the Chennai LHP were of six-storeys the lowest among the six projects. Moreover, a BMPTC official said the reason why Chennai could relatively stick to the deadline was that the precast material was produced by the construction company itself.

Deparpita Roy, fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress in Delhi, also questioned whether it was feasible for commercial entities to carry out construction with prefab materials for low-margin social housing, given the existing financial constraints and lack of adequately trained workforce.

The other challenge involved in LHPs is the transportation of building components, said Roy. She suggested a deeper financial analysis of the projects at different stages of construction could establish if the subsidies provided by the government were adequate.

Soumya Chatterjee is a member of the HT Urban Affairs team, which brings to you each week a story about where we live and how it affects the way we live