Bhubaneswar: A day after taking oath for his third consecutive term, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired the first meeting of the newly-constituted Cabinet on Monday.

In its maiden meeting, the Union Cabinet took a decision to provide assistance to 3 crore additional rural and urban households in the country for the construction of houses under the PM Awas Yojana.

The Centre has been implementing the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana since 2015-16 to provide assistance to the eligible rural and urban households for construction of houses with basic amenities.

Under the PMAY, altogether 4.21 crore houses have been constructed for the eligible poor families in the country in the last 10 years.

All the houses constructed under the PMAY have basic amenities like toilets, LPG connection, electricity connection and drinking water connection through convergence with other schemes of the Centre and state governments.

Earlier in the day, the Prime Minister signed his first file to authorize the release of Rs 20,000 crore as the 17th installment of the PM Kisan Nidhi scheme to benefit 9.3 crore farmers.