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Revolt in plan panel over BPL cap

-The Times of India

 

Two Planning Commission members, Abhijeet Sen and Mihir Shah, came out in revolt on Wednesday against the panel’s affidavit to the Supreme Court that those spending Rs 32 a day in urban areas or Rs 26 a day in villages would no longer be deemed poor by the government.

Sen and Shah told TOI that the Planning Commission had avoided answering the critical question that the SC had asked it — why should there be any cap on the number of beneficiaries under the BPL list?

“Yes, what the Planning Commission has not come out clearly on is why there should be a cap on the beneficiaries for government schemes and subsidy. We have not answered that to the court,” said Abhijeet Sen. Shah too said, “In its affidavit, the commission has avoided answering the crucial question of why there should be a cap on the list of BPL beneficiaries.”

The court had inquired about the logic of having cut-off imposed by the central government on the number of beneficiaries of various government schemes meant for the Below Poverty Line category.

While the BPL cards are provided by the states to the beneficiaries based on the field level census, the fiscal support from the Centre to the schemes and to these beneficiaries is decided on the basis of this poverty line cut-off from the Planning Commission. This forces the states to bear the costs of subsidy if it wants to support the full number of people in the BPL list as per the census.

The Planning Commission has merely reiterated the figures from the Tendulkar report to the SC in its affidavit.

Principal adviser to the Supreme Court Commissioners in the food case, Biraj Patnaik, told TOI, “In a sense, the commission, by not responding to the specific questions that had been put to it by the SC, has tried to mislead the court in its affidavit. They have chosen to be silent on two critical issues. One, on a request for the upward revision of the poverty line and second on not using the caps for determining the BPL.”

Sen said, “It’s a very important question. The Planning Commission has not come out clearly on the issue of the informal caps it has imposed. We will have to answer this if not today then tomorrow. Unfortunately that decision has not been taken in time to inform the court.”

Patnaik said, “The PMO is also responsible for this fiasco since they vetted this affidavit.” The Planning Commission had informed the apex court that the PMO had vetted the affidavit. Sources said while there was a serious divide within the panel even before the affidavit was filed, lawyers within the Congress had advised it to take such a stance and the PMO had also stuck to its gun on the government’s position.

“Tendulkar was not asked to determine the cap. He was asked to determine a comparative poverty ratio figure comparable with the previous one to see if there has been an improvement or not,” Sen said. What the report did was to keep the urban poverty figures the same and update the rural poverty figures based on a different price level, he said.