Shimla, Feb 26
About 2,66,304 families fall below the Poverty line in the state, informed the Himachal Pradesh Government informed on Monday. Replying to a query raised by the Dr. Janak Raj (Bharmaur) in the question hour Panchayati Raj Minister Anirudh Singh said that till January 15, 2024, the number of families below poverty line in the state was 2,66,304.
He said that criteria for selection of BPL families in the state are based on the BPL Survey Guidelines 2002 issued by the Union Ministry of Rural Development in the 10th Five Year Plan (2002-07).
According to the guidelines issued by the state government, families cannot be included in the BPL list (Exclusion Criteria) who have more than 2 hectares of non-irrigated land or more than 1 hectare of irrigated land, have a large sized permanent house, pay income tax and own four wheeler vehicles like car, motor, jeep, tractor, truck and bus etc.
He said that such families whose regular monthly income from salary, pension, honorarium, wage business etc. is more than Rs 2500 per month and any member from the family is in a government job or non-government job, employed regularly or on contract.
The Caste Census (Socio & Economic and Caste Census ) was conducted by the Government in 2022 and decided to use SECC data in all its programs like MNREGA, National Food Security Act etc and date is used to identify beneficiaries and direct benefit transfer schemes. He said that work is also being done to expand it, however no benefits are given to BPL families under any scheme of the Central Government.
Government said that number of BPL families are almost unchanged( 2.60 lakh) in the three years as 2,58,852 BPL family were identified in year 2020-21, 266,326 in 2021-22, 2,65,588 in 2022-23 and 2,66,304 in 2023-24.
