A bitter war of words has broken out between the Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha-run Kalimpong municipality and Darjeeling BJP MP Raju Bista over the implementation of a housing scheme funded by the Centre at the hill town.

The trigger was Bista’s charge that the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U) was not being executed properly in Kalimpong. The first-time MP has quoted the data provided by the Union government to buttress his claim.

But the municipality said the MP was using the data selectively to create a false narrative before the public.

In the ongoing winter session of Parliament, Bista sought details of the allocation made to Bengal under the PMAY-U since 2019 and the beneficiaries in the districts of Darjeeling, Kalimpong and North Dinajpur.

Kaushal Kishore, minister of state for housing and urban affairs, on Thursday gave out the details, which Bista quoted while going after the civic body and the state administration.

“For Kalimpong District, out of 2277 houses allocated, only 302 houses or 13% have been completed,” Bista said in a written statement.

The BJP MP further said he was “absolutely shocked” to see that only three houses were allocated under the PMAY-U in Kalimpong district in 2021. According to him, not a single house has been sanctioned so far in 2022-23 in Kalimpong.

Kalimpong municipality chairman Rabi Pradhan sought to contest Bista’s allegation.

“The housing scheme started in 2017-18 and to get an overall picture, it would have been prudent to come up with figures since then,” said Pradhan.

According to officials of the Kalimpong civic body, out of the 300 sanctioned houses in 2017-18, 239 were completed. For 2018-19, 210 of the 285 sanctioned houses have been completed. In 2019-20, 200 of the 650 approved houses were built.

“The completion percentage is 79.6 for 2017-18, 73.60 for 2018-19 and 30.75 for 2019- 2020,” said Pradhan who added that Bista was using “selective figures” to claim the execution rate of 13 per cent.

The civic chairman added that not a single house had been sanctioned for 2020-21 and 2022-23.

“Of the 1,621 homes approved in 2021-22, foundations of 114 have been laid, lintel work on 34 completed and the roofs of 16 built,” said Pradhan.

Geo-tagging of the progress of work has to be done during five stages and the same is accessible through a government of India website to the officials concerned.

Under the PMAY-U, a house needs to be built at a cost of Rs 4.41 lakh. While the Centre contributes Rs 1.5 lakh, the state provides Rs 2.66 lakh and the beneficiary has to spend Rs 25,000, said Pradhan.

The payments are made in four instalments of Rs 60,000, Rs 1 lakh, Rs 1.5 lakh and Rs 1.6 lakh.

“The MP is not aware of the ground realities and that’s why he is making such claims,” said an official of the civic body.

Bista said he had sought the details of the PMAY-U since 2019 as he was elected as an MP that year.

“It is not a question of selective use of data. My only intention was to find out the progress of work in my constituency,” said Bista, adding that the completion percentage in south Bengal districts was better than Kalimpong during the same period.