The Madras High Court on Friday dismissed a public interest litigation petition filed by a non-governmental organisation against an announcement made by Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami on the floor of the Assembly on Monday to pay ‘special financial assistance’ of ₹ 2,000 each to 60 lakh poor families at an outlay of ₹ 1,200 crore.
A Division Bench of Justices S. Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad rejected the case at the admission stage itself after recording the submissions of Advocate General (A-G) Vijay Narayan that the details of poor families had been gathered by the government agencies in a scientific way through surveys aimed at implementing various livelihood programmes. Though the NGO, Satta Panchayat Iyakkam, doubted if there would be 60 lakh Below the Poverty Line (BPL) families in the State and accused the government of having provided an inflated figure, the government told the court that it had proposed to deposit the money in bank accounts only on the basis of credible data available with the State.
According to the A-G, the number of poor families in rural as well as urban areas in the State had been identified over a period of time. A Participatory Identification of Poor (PIP) process was conducted in all 385 rural blocks in the State under Tamil Nadu Pudhu Vaazhvu Project as well as Tamil Nadu State Rural Livelihood Mission between 2006-07 and 2014-15.
This elaborate exercise led to identification of 32.13 lakh ‘very poor’ and ‘poor’ families and the data was validated by calling for objections from local residents and getting it approved by grama sabhas. A similar exercise undertaken in urban local bodies such as Corporations, Municipalities and Town Panchayats identified 23.54 lakh BPL families.
Further, there were 17 welfare boards in the State for construction labourers, manual labourers, washermen, hair dressers, tailors, handicrafts, palm tree climbers, handloom weavers, leather product makers, artists, goldsmiths, potters, housekeepers, powerloom workers, street vendors, drivers and cooks and as many as 72.44 lakh individuals had got registered with them.
Apart from them, the Department of Fisheries was maintaining a list of 1.64 lakh fishermen families. Therefore, the 60 lakh deserving families would be identified from the available data and around 55,000 enumerators were already on the job of collecting details such as Aaadhar card, ration card and bank account numbers of intended beneficiaries, he said.
“The money would be deposited in bank accounts of all the poor irrespective of the caste, creed or political affiliations,” the A-G said and explained that the intention was to help people affected due to Cyclone Gaja that caused havoc in 12 districts of the State in November and the drought faced by other parts of the State due to the failure of the monsoon.
