Bhubaneswar, Aug. 10: The state government will announce a new housing policy under which all mud houses belonging to the poor and weaker sections of the society will be converted to concrete ones.

Official sources said the chief minister would formally announce the policy after the cabinet approved it.

Housing and urban development minister Pushpendra Singh Deo said concrete houses would be provided free of cost to three categories of beneficiaries - people belonging to low income group, economically weaker sections and slum-dwellers.

Income will be the main criteria for the selection of beneficiaries. People with income up to Rs 1.8 lakh per annum would be treated as economically weaker sections and those who earn up to Rs 3.6 lakh per annum would be considered as belonging to low-income group, said Singh Deo.

Chairman of Odisha State Housing Board and BJD spokesman Pratap Deb said the state government was going to implement party's promise of "concrete house for all" which was in the 2014 election manifesto.

In January, chief minister Naveen Patnaik had announced the launch of Shelter Security Mission, for which it will spend between Rs 15,000 and Rs 20,000 crore.

The state had decided to convert around 25 lakh mud houses across the state to pucca houses within five years.

For this, the government had set a target to facilitate construction of five lakh concrete houses in a year.

However, the completion ratio remained one of the bottlenecks in implementation of housing schemes. Realising the problem, the government has announced incentives for speedy completion of houses.

An incentive of Rs 10,000 would be given for the houses completed within four months. Of this, Rs 9000 will go to beneficiary and remaining Rs 1,000 to the monitoring and supervising functionaries. A cash incentive of Rs 5,000 would be awarded to houses that are completed within six months.