Montek to clarify stand on BPL definition today
03 Oct 2011
Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia is likely to clarify the panel's stand on its controversial definition of persons below the poverty line (BPL) in a fresh affidavit before the Supreme Court today.
However, indications are that the BPL cap of Rs26 a day in rural areas and Rs32 a day in urban areas is unlikely to change; though it has been widely lambasted by economists, the media, and the National Advisory Council, which consider these figures derisory in comparison to the real cost of living.
Ahluwalia met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in this regard on Sunday after his return from China. He will meet plan panel members and rural development minister Jairam Ramesh today before filing the fresh affidavit.
Ramesh is among those who has criticised the narrow definition of BPL families, along with at least two members of the plan panel itself.
Without revising the figures, the Planning Commission will submit an affidavit in the Supreme Court explaining the logic for an expenditure-based cap. Ahluwalia is reported to have told the prime minister that the official BPL and identification of the poor are not linked; and any rise in the BPL definition would have a huge financial cost.
Ramesh has suggested an exclusion criterion having no single below poverty line list, with all the non-excluded households to be part of one main list with subsidiary lists for specific programmes.
Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi too is believed to have asked the plan panel to do a rethink on its definition of poverty, even as National Advisory Council members Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander asked Ahluwalia and other plan members to try and live on Rs32 per day in a city like Delhi.
"Only animals can survive on this money," another NAC member N C Saxena said.
