Prayagraj: On Friday, Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, handed over the keys to 76 affordable housing units built under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) on property reclaimed from the possession of dead gangster Atiq Ahmed.
Adityanath interacted with the children at the site of the apartments that were recently distributed to the needy. He also inspected the flats for the poor.
Beneficiaries will get a 41-square-meter flat built for just Rs 3.5 lakh.
Officials said that a flat with two rooms, a kitchen, and toilet facilities costs Rs 6 lakh. As many as 76 flats built for the poor on land confiscated from slain gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed in Prayagraj were allotted through a lottery on June 9.
“The lottery was drawn for allotment and after verification of 6,030 applicants, 1,590 were found eligible to participate in the lottery,” Arvind Kumar Chauhan, Vice Chairman of Prayagraj Development Authority (PDA) said.
On December 26, 2021, the Chief Minister laid the foundation stone for this cheap housing project on 1,731 square metres of land in the Lukerganj area of Prayagraj that had been taken from Atiq.
The District Urban Development Authorities (DUDA) have taken on this project as part of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), and according to the officials, a total of 76 flats have been constructed over two separate blocks.
Atiq Ahmed was charged in the 2005 murder of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MLA Raju Pal, along with the February 2012 death of a key witness in that case, Umesh Pal.
On April 15 of this year, as Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf Ahmed were being escorted for medical examination in Prayagraj, they were shot dead by individuals posing as journalists. —Inputs from Agencies