The BJP and the Congress traded charges over the Below Poverty Line (BPL) criteria on Monday after Congress communication department chairman Ajay Maken released a copy of the Gujarat government website page that pegged the yardstick for those below the poverty line in the State at Rs. 10.80 daily.
Mr. Maken lashed out at Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, and recalled that the BJP had castigated the Planning Commission for pegging the BPL figures for urban and rural India at Rs. 32 and Rs. 28 a day, respectively. The BJP had described it as a “joke.”
“BJP leaders,” Mr. Maken said, “were mocking the poverty determination figures given by the Planning Commission. Now, we ask the BJP and Mr. Modi, why the Gujarat government’s civil supply department is talking about BPL being below Rs 10.80?”
Mr. Maken questioned the need for the State government to post this circular on its website on December 16, 2013, after a majority of Central government schemes had already been delinked from the BPL.
Hitting back at the Congress for its attack on the Gujarat government, BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman criticised the ruling party for the Centre’s asset-based criterion, which has not been revised for long despite requests from the Gujarat government. She said Gujarat had instead added 11 lakh more BPL families to help them benefit from poverty subsidy.
Based on the Central government’s asset-based criterion, only 21 lakh families come under the BPL in Gujarat. But the State government extended the same criterion and has brought in 11 lakh more families under the BPL on its own expenditure, Ms. Sitharaman contended.
‘Exclusive domain’“Poverty-line criterion determination is an exclusive domain of the Planning Commission and the Centre. The sense of outrage with which the Congress Party has started criticising the Gujarat CM, they have done so without properly realising that the flak is on them,” she said.
