Centre may end up with unspent over Rs 50,000 crore for urban rejuvenation even at end of scheme period

NEW DELHI: A parliamentary panel has flagged that the

housing and urban affairs ministry

may not be able to spend over Rs 50,000 crore of the Centre’s allocation for the second phase of its

urban rejuvenation scheme

, AMRUT, even after the tenure ends in March 2026. It has also highlighted how the ministry is unable to utilise funds for the

National Urban Digital Mission

(NUDM) as the cabinet has not yet approved it, despite it being announced in the last budget.
The panel, in its report on the ‘Demand for Grants for 2025-26’ tabled in both Houses of Parliament on Wednesday, stated that the public bus transport scheme, which was announced in the 2021-22 Budget, was approved by govt only in Aug 2023 as the

PM-eBus Sewa Scheme

. The funds under this scheme were, “for the first time, actually spent during the financial year 2024-25”.
Similarly, the NUDM, which was announced as a new scheme in the July 2024 Budget with an allocation of Rs 1,150 crore for FY 2024-25, has yet to receive cabinet approval. “The funds allocated thus remained unutilised,” it said.
On fund utilisation under the

AMRUT 2.0

mission, which was launched in Oct 2021 with the target to make cities ‘water secure’ and provide functional water tap connections to all households in all of about 4,852 urban local bodies and universal coverage of sewerage and septage management in 500 AMRUT cities, the panel observed that the size of the scheme was Rs 2.8 lakh crore, including the central share of Rs 76,760 crore for five years (2021-22 to 2025-26). However, only Rs 13,172 crore central assistance has been disbursed so far since the inception of the scheme and the total outlay for 2025-26 is Rs 10,000 crore.

“Accordingly, post proposed budgetary allocation of Rs 10,000 crore, the remaining amount of the central share for the mission will be Rs 52,651 crore. The committee has observed that even after the utilisation of the proposed budgetary allocation of Rs 10,000 crore in the FY 2025-26, the mission which is ending in 2026 still has to spend 68% of its centre share of Rs 76,760 crore,” it added.
In its report, the panel on PM-eBus Sewa Scheme, which targets to deploy 10,000 electric buses, mentioned that the ministry has informed that the total demand of buses so far tendered for aggregation stands 6,518 from 13 states and four UTs. Flagging concerns, it said the eligibility of buses per city based on the 2011 census may not provide the correct parameter for their allocation.
It added that the central assistance (CA) of Rs 24, Rs 22 and Rs 20 per km proposed to be provided for 12, 9 and 7 metre buses is less and may result in increased financial burden on municipal corporations. Similarly, the condition of fixed assured kms of 160, 180 and 200 for 7, 9 and 12 metre respectively needs to be revisited as many municipal buses operate only for 150-160 kms daily.

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