Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Murli Manohar Joshi on Monday described the Planning Commission's affidavit on poverty line in the Supreme Court as a “fraud” and “blatantly absurd.”
Questioning the explanation offered by Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia that the poverty line figure of an income of Rs. 32 per head in urban areas and Rs. 26 per capita in rural areas was not meant to serve as the cut-off point for deciding the beneficiaries of various government schemes, Dr. Joshi wondered what then was the exercise about.
Demanding Mr. Ahluwalia's exit from the Commission, he said the affidavit showed he was “totally insensitive” to poverty and the poor in the country.
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Asked what the poverty line criterion was under the Vajpayee government of 1998 to 2004, Dr. Joshi evaded a direct response. Instead, he said: “There was plenty of food in those years; we gave [subsidised] food to anyone who wanted.” He denied there were quotas for State governments on the basis of the number of below poverty line (BPL) people identified by them.
The fact is, as pointed out in contemporaneous reports, in 1999-2000, the Vajpayee government scaled down the percentage of those below the poverty line from 37 per cent of the population to roughly 27 per cent and less than 500 lakh families nationwide were designated below the poverty line with an income of Rs. 350 a month a person, that is, less than Rs. 12 a day, in rural areas and Rs. 454 a month (Rs. 15 a day a person) in urban areas.
But Dr. Joshi insisted: “Despite two drought years during the Vajpayee government's tenure, our godowns were full … we had plenty [of food] we gave [subsidised food] to everyone.”
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Dr. Joshi's view was that there was a deliberate attempt by the Planning Commission under Mr. Ahluwalia to lower the number of people below the poverty line to deny them benefits from various government schemes.
He was also critical of Mr. Ahluwalia's references to the ongoing census exercise on social backwardness, saying that caste census would not help to determine poverty levels, and in any case, it would be several years before the census figures became available for policy makers.