The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Ten legislators included in BPL list

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Oct 14, 2006
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Ten legislators included in BPL list

Special Correspondent

H.D. Basavaraj

BANGALORE: Ten legislators were brought under the below the poverty line (BPL) category in the survey conducted by the Government last year.

Minister for Food and Civil Supplies Govind Karjol, who acknowledged that there were loopholes in the public distribution system (PDS) and distribution of ration cards in the State, said MLAs such as B.A. Jivijaya of Somwarpet and H.D. Basavaraj of Virajpet had been given BPL cards by the department. Both the MLAs returned the cards, he said.

Mr. Karjol told presspersons here on Friday that nearly 16 lakh ration cards (20 per cent) in use in the State were bogus. The number of families that had obtained BPL cards was more than the actual number of people living in poverty. Gram sabhas had not identified eligible beneficiaries, and some families had more than one BPL card, the Minister said.

Many eligible families had been denied BPL cards because they had moved from their villages to urban areas during the time of the survey and also because of the previous government's guidelines to issue a certain percentage of BPL cards within the gram panchayat limits, Mr. Karjol said.

Many families and a few PDS dealers themselves had obtained cards by producing fictitious documents. People in villages did not have enough clout to resist this fraud, Mr. Karjol said.

B.A. Jivijaya

It was difficult to cleanse the entire system. But the department would make efforts to distribute foodgrains to deserving families. Screening of applications would help eliminate bogus ration cards. There could be a substantial reduction in financial subsidies if the process of identification was rationalised, he said.

The Minister said the department had decided to open 10,000 ration shops by December-end. To check diversion of foodgrains to the open market, each shop would be limited to 500 cards. There were over 29,000 ration shops in the State at present, he said.

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