With inordinate delays dogging Prime Minister’s Rs 17,000 crore Married Accommodation Project (MAP) for armed forces personnel, the Government has shunted out the Army official heading the project in a bid to put it back on track. Maj Gen Y.K. Jain will take over from present Director General (MAP) Lt Gen Yash Malhotra on August 9. South Block sources claim that, upset with the delay, Defence Minister George Fernandes decided to replace Malhotra after deliberations with the Army headquarters.Envisaged within a four-year time-frame, MAP is running behind schedule by a year and six months. Hundreds of officers and other ranks will retire even before the construction of the first dwellings. Following this, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is now planning to extend the time-frame to six years. In another revision the number of dwellings too have been reduced from four lakh to 1.98 lakh.Admitting delay, MoD spokesman P.K. Bandopadhyaya said it was due to procedural problems. ‘‘Since this is the first year, the project involved a lot of tendering and land acquisition which takes time. But, by next year we hope to get back on track,’’ he added.Apart from procedural problems, tendering and land acquisition delays, differences between the three Defence services are also said to be responsible for the delay. According to sources, while the Navy insisted that pre-fabricated material be used for its dwellings, the Army opposed the idea for lack of multiple vendors and the prohibitive costs of building such large number of houses. The stalemate ended after extended deliberations between senior officials from the three services.Lack of housing has been cited as a major blow to the morale of Defence officials as they wait years before getting family quarters.
