After the Union government’s flagship urban poverty alleviation mission ended last year, the West Bengal government has flagged “non-availibility” of funds from the Centre, saying it has affected the construction and operation of urban homeless shelters.
The Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihood Mission (DAY-NULM), which included a component of construction, operation and maintenance of the homeless shelters, ended on September 30, 2024. A new mission is in the works, however, it is yet to be approved.
The West Bengal State Urban Development Agency (SUDA) wrote to the Union Housing and Urban Affairs on October 15 requesting for the release of the remaining funds for the homeless shelters.
“…it is needless to say that non-availability of a schematic fund is hindering the performance of all the components of DAY-NULM, including, Shelter for Urban Homeless (SUH) component. The construction work of Shelters for Urban Homeless in different urban local bodies (ULB) is affected by this fund crunch,” the SUDA wrote.
The operation and maintenance of the functional shelters had also been hit since October 2024, leading to the residents and staff being affected, it added.
“It is brought before your kind notice that total committed liability under SUH component is Rs. 52.00 Crore. At this juncture, you are requested to make necessary arrangements to provide fund at the earliest for SUH component,” SUDA wrote.
The MoHUA did not respond to a request for a comment.
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Anuradha Talwar, a member of the West Bengal state level shelter monitoring committee set up as per a Supreme Court order in the ER Kumar case, said, “As of now, no shelters have closed. ULBs are trying to provide some money and NGOs that run the shelters are also using their own funds. But, this is not sustainable.”
According to government sources, the Union government had proposed an allocation of Rs 20 crore for West Bengal under the Mission in 2024-2025.
As per a Ministry of Finance instruction, 25% of the amount earmarked for a state in a financial year can be released at one go and the remaining amount can be released (25% at a time) only if the state achieves 75% utilisation of the amount released earlier.
According to sources, Rs 5 crore was released to the West Bengal government in 2024-2025, but due to the unspent balance, no additional amount could be allocated. While the mission ended, the MoHUA launched a pilot scheme, Deendayal Jan Aajeevika Yojana-Shehari (DJAY-S), under which Rs 7.50 crore was released to the West Bengal government, a government source said.
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The DAY-NULM, which was started in 2014, provided funds to 6.79 lakh self-help groups, gave IDs to 32.59 lakh street vendors and set up 1,995 homeless shelters, including 83 in West Bengal, as per MoHUA data.
