Writing on wall: Cgarh bid to spot real poor

To deter ineligible people from grabbing the benefits of the state governments subsidised rice scheme,Chhattisgarh has come up with a novel idea....

To deter ineligible people from grabbing the benefits of the state governments subsidised rice scheme,Chhattisgarh has come up with a novel idea: write the name of the BPL cardholder and Re 1 per kg rice or Rs 2 per kg rice on the front wall of the house.

Opposition Congress says it is unfair to humiliate the poor after the government failed to check irregularities when it was preparing the BPL list. Earlier this month,the Madhya Pradesh government was criticised by the BSP for a similar drive.

Chhattisgarhs Food and Civil Supplies Departments Principal Secretary Vivek Dhand wrote to district collectors to complete the wall writing on the houses of 37.19 lakh BPL families by September 15 for greater transparency and to ensure that fruits of Chief Ministers Food security scheme percolated down to the genuine poor. The department feels it will help identify the real and ineligible beneficiaries.

The 30-lakh BPL families,who are getting 35 kg of rice at Rs 2 per kg under the scheme,will have a clear marking in front of their house which could be like this Shri Muniram do rupaye kilo chawal. The houses of 7.19 lakh Antodaya poorest among the poor families will have a similar writing: Ek rupaye kilo chawal.

The state government is getting complaints about ineligible persons securing BPL ration cards and there are families which are in possession of more than one BPL ration card. Besides,ration cards in the name of deceased persons and those who have migrated to other places are also being used to grab benefits meant for the poor, an official of the Food and Civil Supplies department said. Earlier,it was decided to publicly display the list of BPL ration cardholders on panchayat notice boards and other public places.

Opposition Congress agrees that ineligible people figured in the BPL list. There are many complaints about those running ration shops forcibly keeping cards of others and diverting subsidised rice into the market, said state Congress president Dhanendra Sahu. But he described the move to write Ek rupaye kilo chawal and Do rupaye kilo chawal on the houses of 37 lakh beneficiaries as humiliation of the poor. Sahu said: Is it not like government officers being asked to display their monthly salary on the front gate of their houses? The state has to find out some other way to weed out ineligible persons from the BPL list.

When P Dayanand,sub-divisional magistrate in Sarguja district made an appeal to ineligible BPL ration cardholders to voluntarily return cards or face action,41 persons returned their BPL ration cards.

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While Sarguja district,for instance,has a population of about five lakh families, 3,87,759 families are availing benefits of the rice scheme. In the last seven years,the number of BPL families in the district has swelled by 1.72 lakh. In 2002,the district had 2.15 lakh poor while their number is now more than 3.87 lakh.