BPL or not-SCs to get free plots in Haryana: Govt

Chandigarh, Dec 20 (UNI) The Haryana government will provide residential plots of 100 square yards to all eligible persons belonging to Scheduled Castes irrespective of the fact whether their names appear in the list of families living below the poverty line (BPL) or not.

State Chief Parliamentary Secretary Dharambir Singh today said such plots, as announced by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, would be alloted only to members belonging to Scheduled Castes and no eligible person would be left out.

He said the state government had decided to allot such plots to only those persons who were neither state government employees nor had any private job with a salary equal to that of a government job.

Besides, such beneficiary should not have more than an acre of land in their possession and should have not taken any plot from the government earlier.

Mr Dharambir made it clear that to get a plot of 100 square yards, it would not be necessary to get the name included among the BPL lists. He said that 6.51 lakh persons were living below the poverty line in Haryana.

In the neighbouring Punjab, he said, the geographical area was more as compared to that of Haryana and the number of members belonging to Scheduled Castes was also high. Despite this, only 2.96 lakh persons had been enlisted in the BPL list.

He said Mr Bhupinder Singh Hooda had taken up the issue of BPL families with the Central government and the Planning Commission urging them that the Centre should not fix the number of BPL families in advance. Rather, the number of BPL families should be based on the incidence of poverty in the state.

He reiterated the committment of the state government to include every eligible family in the BPL lists.

UNI