Nitish for inclusion of one crore people in BPL list

Patna, Mar 1 (UNI) Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today in the state Assembly said that his government was in favour of inclusion of one crore people in the list of below poverty line (BPL) and urged the Centre for changing the relevent criteria to clear the bottleneck in this regard.

Replying to the special debate on Governor's address to the joint session of state legislature, Mr Kumar assured the house that the state government had taken several steps to rectify the error crept in the BPL list and requested the members to help the state administration in its endeavour.

Referring to demand of opposition members for cancellation of the entire BPL list, the Chief Minister said it would ultimately go against the poor. Rectification of BPL list would ensure benefits of various welfare schemes to the poor, he said adding cancellation of the list would deprive them from getting succour from the government sponsored schemes.

Mr Kumar said that a household survey was carried out on the directive of the Centre during RJD regime and the BPL list was prepared on the basis of that RJD and Congress were responsible for the error in the list and the NDA government was only trying to rectify it, he said.

He urged the RJD and Congress to use their influence in changing the criterion for identification of the people for inclusion in the BPL list to extend the coverage of the welfare schemes to one crore poor people.

Mr Kumar said as per the existing criteria, people with 13 points were entitled to get included in BPL list but about one crore people could be beneficiaries if the standard points for consideration was increased to 16. He said the Centre had the right to change the criterion as food grains which is distributed among the poor was released by the Union Government.

UNI