Rural development minister Nitish Mishra (extreme right) at his janata darbar in Patna on Tuesday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, April 12: The construction of houses under the Indira Awas Yojana would be on the constant radar of the state government, which is planning to introduce the global positioning system (GPS) technology to keep tabs on the speed of the project’s implementation.

“There have been complaints that houses under the scheme are not making the desired progress. We are going to take the help of technology to rein in through the GPS, which will enable us to take the photograph of the construction on a monthly basis,” rural development minister Nitish Mishra said on the sidelines of his department’s janata darbar at the party office here today.

GPS is a space-based global navigation satellite system, which can locate any place on the globe at any time, irrespective of the weather conditions.

The system named as “Geo-tagged stamped photography” could keep a constant tab on the constructions to be carried out under the Indira Awas Yojana throughout the state on a monthly basis, Mishra said, adding that it would hasten the pace of construction work which has come under a lot of criticism from various quarters because of slow progress.

The minister said the new mechanism would be outsourced but which agency has not been decided yet. “This scheme will be started on a pilot basis in a few blocks in the state and later it will be expanded throughout the state after its successful completion.”

He said: “There is no data available with the department to tell the exact number of BPL people who have either been benefited by the scheme or are in the wait list and hence we have decided to filter the list by deleting the names of those from the list who have already received the benefits of the scheme. This will enable us to know the actual number of people in queue for Indira Awas Yojana houses,” he said.

Mishra said this scheme would also be started on a pilot basis at nine blocks of the state. Block development officers would be responsible for the execution and supervision of the work, the minister added.