It isn’t often that you see a minister requesting a member of Parliament to withdraw his resolution with such respect and persuasion. However, on Saturday evening the Lok Sabha witnessed this unusual spectacle with Union minister of state for rural development Pradeep Jain asking veteran RJD MP and former rural development
minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh to withdraw a resolution moved by him. The resolution concerned the identification of families living below the poverty line and the welfare measures taken for them. The importance accorded to this resolution can be gauged from the fact that no less than 17 MPs spoke on the issue over a period of four hours.
Most expressed their concern about the different poverty figures (of persons/families) quoted by various expert committees and the government. And rightly so.
At the end of the discussion, the MoS requested Mr Singh to withdraw his resolution as he claimed that the government is making efforts to provide a livelihood to those below the poverty line.
However, as the former rural development minister pointed out, the government has not been able to identify clearly the number of BPL persons in the country. Mr Singh said the N.C. Saxena Committee had said that 50 per cent of the country’s population is poor.
The Tendulkar panel put this figure at 37 per cent while the Arjun Sengupta panel said that 70 to 80 per cent of the population is surviving on less than Rs 20, said Mr Singh.
He added, “It has still not been determined how many exactly are poor.”
... You decide which committee’s report you want to accept.” He demanded that a decision on this issue be taken at the Prime Minister’s level.