Raise maximum limit for BPL category: BJP leader

CHANDIGARH: A senior BJP leader on Monday demanded that the Centre should raise the maximum income limit of Below Poverty Line category so that more poor people can get benefits of the schemes meant for BPL category.

"The government should raise the maximum income criteria of BPL category from the present amount of Rs 630 per month to at least Rs 3,000 per month," senior BJP leader Satya Pal Jain said here.

"At present, as per the central government criteria, only those who earn not more than Rs 21 per day are poor...The maximum limit, if increased, will help more poor people to avail the benefits of the schemes meant for the BPL category," he said.

The current limit of Rs 21 per day is unrealistic. With this income, a person cannot even feed himself for one day, leave alone feeding a family and other basic expenses like clothes, accommodation and medicine, he said.

"Therefore, this limit needs to be suitably enhanced so that the facilities meant for the poor can reach all the poor people and not only to some selected people," the national in-charge of the BJP's legal and legislative cell said in a statement.

He also alleged that a large number of food grains are rotting in the godowns of the Central government, while thousands of people are starving and demanded that these food grains be distributed free to poor people.