SRINAGAR: Nearly four out of every five houses sanctioned for Jammu and Kashmir under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U) and PMAY-U 2.0 have been completed and handed over to beneficiaries, according to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs’ reply to a Rajya Sabha Question.
Of the 45,982 houses sanctioned for the Union Territory since the scheme’s launch, 35,961, or 78.2 per cent, have been both completed and occupied, a completion-to-occupancy ratio of exactly 100 per cent, meaning every finished house has found a beneficiary.
The scheme’s uptake in J&K has been markedly uneven year to year. In its first year, 2015-16, only 104 houses were sanctioned — and all 104 were both completed and occupied within the same year. The pace barely moved in 2016-17, with 2,923 houses sanctioned, but completions that year numbered just 9, pointing to a lag between sanction and construction that would recur through the decade.
The scheme picked up more visibly from 2017-18 onward. That year saw 4,004 houses sanctioned, though only 41 were completed and occupied. The gap between sanctioning and delivery widened further in 2018-19, the single biggest year for sanctions in J&K’s PMAY-U history, with 11,653 houses approved — yet completions that year stood at 3,286, showing the backlog from earlier years beginning to clear alongside fresh approvals.
Sanctions eased somewhat in 2019-20 (8,482) and fell sharply in 2020-21 to just 1,215 — the slowdown coinciding with the COVID-19 disruption seen across states in the same period. Completions that year, however, held up relatively well at 2,374, again outpacing the depressed sanction numbers and reflecting work catching up on already-approved projects.
The year 2021-22 brought a rebound, with 10,260 houses sanctioned — among the higher annual figures for the Union Territory — and completions rising to 3,827. But 2022-23 saw a steep drop in sanctions to just 266 houses, even as completions surged to 6,622, the highest single-year completion figure in the J&K series, indicating the year was dominated by finishing earlier projects rather than starting new ones.
Sanctions recovered moderately in 2023-24 (3,677 houses) with completions of 3,626 running almost in step. The pattern of sanctions and completions moving closely together continued into 2024-25, when 1,272 houses were sanctioned against 9,127 completed — again reflecting a year focused on delivery of the accumulated pipeline rather than fresh approvals. In 2025-26, sanctions rose to 2,126 houses, with 4,705 completed. For 2026-27, the current year, no houses had been sanctioned as of the reply date, while 364 houses were recorded as completed, likely carried over from prior-year approvals.
Taken together, the J&K numbers illustrate a scheme whose early years were sanction-heavy and completion-light, before the pattern inverted from around 2022 onward, as the Union Territory worked through its backlog and completions began to consistently outpace or match fresh sanctions — a trajectory the Ministry’s data suggests is now nearing saturation of the originally approved pipeline.
