Parties slam Plan panel’s BPL status report

VIJAY DEO JHA

THURSDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER 2011

| RANCHI

What ‘welfare’ Governments in the last six decades could not achieve to lift poor out of poverty line; Planning Commission of India did it overnight by an affidavit in the Supreme Court; swearing people spending Rs 32 in the urban area and Rs 26 in the rural area don’t deserve BPL status.

But the States like Jharkhand having shocking statistics of poverty, the political class has strongly opposed the very redefining of the BPL. The Congress chose a close guard language to seek a review while the BJP painted the Congress- led UPA Government as anti-people and anti-poor.

“Report and its recommendations are yet to be accepted by the Central Government. It is not final we have been told by the Central leadership. So there is no cause of concern,” State Congress spokesperson Sailesh Sinha said. Wary about the Congress getting anti-poor tag everyday Sinha accepted the criteria set by the Commission was illogical.

Former Finance Minister and BJP MP Yahswant Sinha termed it a fine act to blur the line between poor and peer. “The Government is removing poverty in the papers by changing its definition. It has become obvious now that the Government considers poor as a liability and doesn’t want to spare resources for their upliftment,” he said.

He refused to believe Congress and the Government confused over the BPL issue. “The Government has always refused to accept actual figure of the BPL families in the country even if after the reports of various commissions appointed by the Government,” he said.

The Left Front has too joined the chorus. MLA Vinod Singh of the CPI (ML) and Arup Chatterjee of the Marxist Coordination Committee registered their strong opposition. “Well, policymakers should be given `32 per day as sustenance cost and than ask them their experience of hardship. Only then they will know poor and their pain,” Chatterjee said.

JVM Chief and MP Babulal Marandi deployed three adjectives ‘cruel’, ‘casual’, and ‘sad’, to thrash the Centre and the Commission. “It would have been good on the part of the Government to take some radical steps to end poverty but not by this way. People are getting alienated and they are one who to face the burnt of price hike. Pittance has been pressed into the whole discourse to redefine poverty three times less than minimum wage,” he said.