New Delhi, June 11: Government employees earning Rs 10,000 per month besides people having metered electricity and water connection, bank account and LIC policy or paying income tax will stand automatically excluded from the list of poor persons as part of the new methodology adopted for the BPL Census 2010.
Simultaneously, the government has also identified parameters to automatically include people in the list of poor persons.
This would apply to households of SC, ST, primitive tribal groups, minorities, landless agricultural labour, artisans, destitute households, the homeless and households where the sole bread winner is either a minor or over 60 years of age.
Household with a member having a chronic disease, households of legally released bonded labour and those having MGNREGA job cards will also be counted as BPL.
“This methodology will pave the way to exclude the well to do households so that the remaining ones can be considered as poor and eligible for inclusion as BPL,” said a senior official in the rural development ministry.
With a huge mismatch between the BPL estimates of the states and the Centre, the Census 2010 will help the government in two ways.
While on one hand it will ensure that the benefit of Central welfare schemes go only to the genuine beneficiaries, on the other it will help the government prune its whopping Rs 72,000 crore food subsidy bill
source;Deccanchronicle