Chandigarh, June 24
In what can be termed as a virtual bonanza for the poor in Punjab, the Planning Commission has agreed to an upward revision of below poverty line (BPL) families in the state by two and a half times, thereby ensuring that they now constitute 21 per cent of the state’s population.

The move, in line with the Tendulkar Committee report accepted by the Commission last month, will make 7.5 lakh more families eligible for various forms of assistance under central schemes. The Centre has now accepted there are 12.5 lakh BPL families in the state. There are a total of 46 lakh households in the state.

Punjab had been insisting since the last few years that it was being discriminated by being denied central assistance under various welfare schemes because of the low BPL cap put on the state. The state will get immediate relief as far as its ‘atta dal’ scheme is concerned. Against wheat being received for 5.23 lakh families, it supplies flour to 15 lakh families and has recently decided to give the benefit to 5 lakh more families. Now the state will get wheat for 12.5 lakh families.

New entrants into the BPL list will also get the benefit of various health schemes. More people will be eligible for the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna under which BPL families are eligible for free treatment worth Rs 30,000 and also the Punjab illness fund, under which such families get Rs 1.5 lakh for life-threatening diseases.

The poor in the state will now also come in the ambit of various schemes being run by the Rural Development and Social Welfare departments. These include the Indira Awaas Yojana, making them eligible for a grant of Rs 50,000 for a house and Rs 35,000 for repair work. More people will be eligible for the SGSY self-improvement scheme under which they can avail subsidies and loans.

Children from BPL families will be eligible for various scholarship schemes.

Meanwhile the union ministries of rural development and urban poverty alleviation have issued separate directions this month to all states to conduct the BPL census in both rural and urban areas. This census, which is conducted every five years, will start this month and be completed by December this year.

All families who have a motorised vehicle, even a two-wheeler, would be automatically excluded from the survey. So will households owning a refrigerator or landline phone or 2.5 acres of irrigated land. Households without shelter would be automatically included and the remaining would be assigned deprivation scores. The order of priority for inclusion in the BPL list would depend on the largest number of deprivations. In case of urban areas, access to availability of basic services like drinking water, electricity, sanitation and sewerage would decide inclusion into the BPL list.

The BPL census would also move away from the earlier concept of calorie intake norm under which calorie consumption was calculated by converting consumed quantities in last 30 days. Now the Planning Commission has recommended a mixed reference system under which clothing, footwear, use of durables and access to education and institutional health will also be taken into consideration to arrive at the poverty lines.