Patna, (Bihar Times): The war of words on the BPL list
goes on. A day after the state government announced
the reduction of foodgrains to the Below the Poverty
Line families on Friday the Union rural development
minister, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, asked as to how is
it that about 90 per cent families of Bihar had
suddenly come under the BPL list.
According to the 2001 Census there were about 1.43
crore total families in Bihar. The figure might have
increased in the last seven years. Now the state
government is saying that out of this 1.21 crore
families are under the BPL. This means that about 90
per cent families are now under the BPL, he said in
Patna on Saturday.
It needs to be mentioned that on Friday the state
government said that now the BPL family would be
getting 25 kgs of foodgrains and three litres of
kerosene instead of 35 kgs which is given throughout
the country. The state chief minister, Nitish Kumar,
made this announcement on Friday. He said that the new
scheme will come into effect from June next.
Nitish Kumar said that there had been scaling down of
foodgrains because in the last seven years the BPL
families have increased from 65 lakhs to 1.21 crores.
He said that since the Centre had not increased the
allocation of foodgrains the state government had to
made this reduction. The chief minister was of the
view that this would not affect the food requirements
of the BPL families adversely as in the last seven
years the family size has decreased.
He said the state government would have to spend Rs 68
crore to purchase additional 75,209 metric tones of
foodgrains to meet the food requirements. This is a
big burden on the state exchequer, but the state will
have to bear it. Nitish said that 2.5 litres of
kerosene would be provided to each Above Poverty Lines
family as well.
The state government’s announcement is likely to
create further controversy as the case relating to the
Right to Food is being monitored by the Supreme Court.
True last July in a seminar in Patna several
economists questioned the BPL list of Bihar, which
they think is inadequate.
However, claiming that in the last seven years the
number of poor in Bihar had almost doubled is not
going down well too. The scaling down of foodgrains to
the poor is most likely to become a big political
issue. There is a general perception that many
families of the APL have falsely got themselves
registered under the BPL list.