Siddaramaiah noted that the percentage of people holding BPL cards in Tamil Nadu is 40 per cent. Also, he said that only 5.67 per cent of citizens in Karnataka should be BPL as per NITI Aayog. However, 1.47 crore households having 4.67 crore people have BPL cards.
How is it that 80 per cent of citizens in Karnataka are below the poverty line (BPL)?
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday latched on to this mind-boggling figure during the start of his two-day review meeting with the state’s administrative machinery and ordered a crackdown on bogus BPL cards.
Siddaramaiah noted that the percentage of people holding BPL cards in Tamil Nadu is 40 per cent. Also, he said that only 5.67 per cent of citizens in Karnataka should be BPL as per NITI Aayog. However, 1.47 crore households having 4.67 crore people have BPL cards.
“We need to eliminate all bogus cards while issuing new BPL cards to those genuinely poor,” Siddaramaiah said.
According to the food & civil supplies department, there are 2.95 lakh new ration card (BPL) applications pending.
Between December 2021 and February 2024, authorities have deleted 6.17 lakh dead BPL members.
Cleaning up the BPL database is crucial for Siddaramaiah, the finance minister, as the government is spending over Rs 8,000 crore this year under the Anna Bhagya scheme. The BPL database is also the basis for the Gruha Lakshmi scheme, the biggest of the five guarantees that costs over Rs 28,000 crore.
Siddaramaiah also pointed out that Karnataka has 76 lakh pensioners. This, he said, makes Karnataka among the highest pension-paying states in India. “Officials must take immediate steps to stop pension payments once the receiver is dead. Similarly, officials should take steps to complete the process of mapping two lakh accounts with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI),” he said.