Patna: Over 2 lakh poor people from extremely backward, backward and general as well as minority communities are set to gain as the Centre has accepted the request of Bihar for transferring quotas under the Prime Minister Housing Scheme (rural) from SC/ST category to people of these categories.

Bihar had made this request as sufficient beneficiaries under SC/ST quota were not available in the state. This had come to light after verification of the socio-economic caste census data of 2011.

According to the scheme norms, 60 per cent of the houses remain reserved for SC/ST category beneficiaries and based on this norm, a total of 7,05,970 houses had to be made for people of these categories out of 11,76,617 houses that had been sanctioned for Bihar during 2016-17 and 2017-18. While 6,37,658 houses had been sanctioned for Bihar in the housing scheme in 2016-17, the corresponding number was 5,38,959 in 2017-18.

While selecting the beneficiaries, the rural development department, which implements the rural housing scheme in the state, found out that the number of SC/ST families which could be selected for this scheme was 2,46,188 less than the total 7,05,970 such families.

Following this, the Bihar government wrote to the Centre for allowing this excess number to other categories else it would have to surrender the excess number allocated under the SC/ST category.

"We recently received a letter from the Centre allowing us to transfer the excess number of households under the SC/ST category to others and minority categories," said a senior official in the state rural development department and added that while 2,09,260 of these houses would be allotted to the beneficiaries of EBC, OBC and general categories, 36,928 units would go to people from the minority community.

Under the PM housing scheme (rural), beneficiaries are given Rs 1.20 lakh for constructing pucca houses and in addition to this, 90 man-daysof employment under MNREGA too can be used in constructing the house and in case the beneficiary would go for toilet construction an additional Rs 12,000 would be given as encouragement money after construction of the toilet. The Centre and the state share the cost in a 60:40 ratio.

As far as progress of this project in Bihar is concerned, so far 40,000 houses have been constructed so far and the department is aiming to complete construction of all the 11.76 lakh houses, sanctioned during 2016-17 and 2017-18, would be completed by end of this year.

'Planned murder'

RJD spokesperson Chitranjan Gagan dubbed the murder of party leader Kailash Paswan, from Nawada, a planned murder and demanded formation of a special investigation team to probe the assassination.

He said Paswan's son had filed a case on July 6, expressing apprehension that his father had been kidnapped but the police did nothing. The RJD leader said had the police been active, Paswan could have been saved.

Man held

Kazimohammadpur police arrested Raghav Mani while he was threatening student leaders and employees of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar Bihar University on Wednesday afternoon.

Senior superintendent of police Harpreet Kaur said Raghav, a notorious criminal, has been threatening the employees to grab a tender.