The State government will undertake a scrutiny of ration cards in the coming months to detect false claims on BPL (below the poverty line) status, Minister for Food and Civil Supplies and Registration T.M. Jacob said here on Friday.
The Minister told the media that many who should have been in the APL (above the poverty line) category had obtained BPL cards while some included in the APL category were actually eligible to be included in the BPL category. The latter would be included in the BPL category.
Mr. Jacob said that strict norms would be evolved to determined BPL status. The Planning Commission's submission before the Supreme Court regarding poverty line was not correct. (The commission had said that an individual income of just Rs.25 a day constitutes adequate “private expenditure on food, education and health.”)
He said the government had issued a record number of 5.75 lakh ration cards within 100 days of its assuming office. As many as 3.13 lakh pending applications and 2.62 lakh new applications were cleared. There were 76.67 ration card holders in the State now. Of them, more than 20 lakh cardholders were getting rice at Re.1 while nearly 43 lakh cardholders were being given rice at Rs.2 a kg. The objective was that a family should be able to buy food grains for a month with a day's wages of one member obtained under the rural employment guarantee scheme.
The Minister said the Civil Supplies Department had carried out all the three schemes proposed in the 100-day programme of the government including supply of rice at Re.1 a kg to the poor.
The Registration Department inaugurated facility for online submission of applications for encumbrance certificate, registration certificate, marriage certificate, and certified copies of documents. The stamp duty for partition deeds and gift deeds was reduced to Rs.1,000.
He said that local self-government institutions would be involved in revising fair values proposed to be undertaken in about 700 villages where resurvey had been completed. Modalities for revising the fair values in other villages had not been decided.
