If poverty and despair need depiction,Ayodhya Hills and its surrounding villages offer a perfect scenario as the poorest of the poor here shell out a premium ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 1,200 to procure a BPL card for cheap foodgrains. By any standard,the poverty-stricken villagers should naturally qualify for the BPL cards but politics and corruption combine to make this anti-poverty scheme a tool to squeeze money by those who have the power. These are the villages where Maoists have dug in deep and from its vicinity a West Bengal Police Intelligence Branch inspector and his schoolteacher friend were abducted last week. They continue to be missing. There is no word from the abductors except an SMS message. The family members of the abducted persons have been making desperate appeals for the release of the duo. A visit to Ayodhya Hills provides enough clues as to how underground outfits have won sympathy of the villagers. It reveals a bizarre dimension of a BPL scam. While elsewhere,one comes across poor villagers names not being on the BPL list,or the relatively wealthy being endowed with cards,here BPL cards are up for sale. The Chatuhansa village panchayat in Arsa block has 25 villages under its jurisdiction. Around 50-60 families live in each village of the area. At the end of 2005,BPL ration cards were issued for the villagers. Official records claim that 80 per cent of the villagers belong to the BPL category. A reality check revealed that not more than two-three persons in a particular village own BPL cards. The villagers of Arsa block were,instead,found to have mostly Above Poverty Level (APL) cards. Even though the monthly income of many here is less than Rs 500 and they live in ramshackle shanties,most of them have failed to clear the 13-parameter test to have a BPL card,and have,instead,been provided APL cards. Most of this enlisting is manipulated by the village panchayat heads who sell BPL cards at a premium. In Nalakucha,a village of 40 families,only one family had the means to buy a BPL card. Ghari Rai Majhi,the only BPL card-holder in the village,says: Four years ago,we were told by the panchayat pradhan that our BPL cards were ready and then we were told to give the Panchayat members Rs 1,200 for getting the card. Nobody in our village had the financial means to spend Rs 1,200. Since My father was a local CPM leader,we got the card and paid Rs 700 for it a discount of Rs 500. During the tenure of Jamuna Majhi,former panchayat pradhan of Chatuhansa,in 2005,BPL cards were allegedly sold to the villagers indiscriminately. In the past four years,however,no card has been issued to the villagers. Sunil Mahato,son of Baburam Mahato,a BPL-card holder in Kumirdiha village,says: We had to spend Rs 1,000 for getting the BPL card. We have 10 members in our family and there are only two earning members. After our card was issued,we were told that there were some mistakes in it. We had to buy a card which was allocated to another villager, he said. The BPL card sold to Baburam was originally allocated to Anjani Majhi of Kumirdiha. The name was struck off with a pen and the card was sold to Baburam. Anjani was given an APL card. The villagers in Kumirdiha alleged that people who belong to the APL category often buy BPL cards allocated to the poor in other villages as many do not have the means to buy rations despite the heavily subsidised rates. For instance,Subodh Mondal of Kumirdiha has a BPL card. He lives in a concrete house and his other family members own APL cards. Like him,Amarnath Mondal,who lives in two-storey pucca house,has a BPL card. Renghu Mondal,another resident of Kumirdiha,said he,too,had to buy the BPL card. We arranged for Rs 500 by mortgaging household articles and bought the card. But the ration dealer,who is a CPM man,keeps the card with him, he rued. Jamuna Majhi,the former panchayat pradhan and a member of Arsa zonal committee of the CPM who ran the panchayat for eight years (1998-2006),said: In my tenure,no card was sold to villagers. Forward Bloc leaders who run the panchayat now try to malign my image by making false allegations. Sibu Majhi,CPM zonal secretary,said: In 2005,70 per cent of the BPL cards were sold by the Forward Bloc members. We have submitted a deputation to the BDO in this connection. Subarna Roy,BDO of Arsa,admitted: There are some discrepancies in the BPL list. Moreover,the BPL list prepared by us and that prepared by the Food and Supply department do not match. But we have not received any written complaint from the villagers regarding BPL cards being sold to them.
