The Kerala Government is planning to fine-tune the list of below-poverty line (BPl) families to make the public distribution system more effective by excluding people with obviously high income and property holdings from the list.
As per an affidavit the Government has filed in the Supreme Court in response to the recommendations of the Justice Wadhwa Commission, people owning four-wheeler vehicles and houses with areas exceeding 1,000 sq ft cannot become PDS beneficiaries under the BPl list.
Government employees, teachers and employees of public sector undertakings will be out of the list as per the affidavit filed in apex court by the state Government through its standing counsel Beena Madhavan. Also, holders of landed property of over one acre will also go out of the purview of BPl list if they do not belong to scheduled tribes.
Those who are paying income tax also cannot enjoy the benefits available to BPl families. At the same time, the Government will bring into the list people with physical handicaps and the mentally disabled. Officials in the Civil supplies Department said that an overhauling of the criteria for defining BPl families has been a long-felt need.
“Several measures adopted in the past had failed to clean up the BPl list. For example, the Government employees were asked to get themselves out of the BPl list but several had refused to do this. However, the current steps are seen as effective and reasonable,” said an official.
The State Government is also planning to link ration cards to Aadhaar. It thinks that linking ration cards to Aadhaar would be helpful in ensuring the exclusion from the BPl list those who do not deserve to be in it. However, it is not yet clear whether Aadhaar enrolment would be made compulsory for getting ration cards.
There has always been a mismatch between the estimates of the State and Central governments on the number of BPl families in Kerala.