The proposed new scheme, as announced in the Rail Budget for 2010-11, would provide "house for all" railway employees, from officers to gangmen. The scheme, however, it is estimated, would benefit only 30-40 per cent of the employees as the rest already have homes of their own.

Mr Santosh Rungta, President, CREDAI, said, "This will open up opportunities for developing affordable housing in the public-private partnership model."

The scheme was likely to allot railway land for setting up housing projects, Mr Rungta said. "It should allow a portion of the projects to be sold for the common people, while the rest should be allotted to the railway employees," he said. The proportion of the housing projects to be sold to other than railway employees could vary between 25 per cent and 70 per cent, depending on the location of the projects, he pointed out. The developers would hand over the units for the employees to the Railway Ministry free of cost, he said. While the Railway Ministry had not given out any concrete proposal for the scheme to CREDAI yet, various proposals had been received by the private sector over the last two months for developing projects on railway land in places such as Delhi, Aurangabad and Kolkata, Mr Rungta added.