Terming the Planning Commission’s yardsticks for determining poverty in the country as “impossible” for the subsistence of any person, the Supreme Court on Saturday directed the Centre to earmark 10 million tonnes of food grains exclusively for the poorest of the poor, including those living in the 150 most poor districts and accounting for the majority of the 3,000 malnutrition deaths every day.
“According to the Planning Commission, `15 per capita per day in rural areas and `20 in urban areas is the yardstick for evaluating who is below the poverty line (BPL). It is impossible for any individual in an urban area to consume 2,100 calories in `20 and 2,400 calories in `15 in rural areas,” a bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma said.
The court pointed out that these figures on calories required for normal persons per day had been fixed by the government agencies themselves. “The Planning Commission may revise norms of per capita amount looking at the price index of May, 2011 or any other subsequent dates,” the court said, rejecting the parameters fixed by it.
While finding the Centre’s proposal to release 5 millions tones of additional food grains to all the states and Union Territories for distribution to BPL families as inadequate, the top court directed the government to double the allocation and make it at least 10 million tonnes for the time being.
The increased five million tonnes would exclusively go to the 150 most poor districts in the country while the other five million tones “must go to the most vulnerable sections” in other parts of the country, ordered the court.
To prevent any pilferage and corruption in distribution, the bench asked the Justice D.P. Wadhwa Committee, assisting the court in monitoring the PDS and collecting data on its functioning in different states, to supervise the distribution of the increased quota, which was ordered to be increased taking into account “conflicting” figures on the BPL population produced by the states and Centre.
Commenting on the conflicting figures, the court said “food allocation should be based on every year’s population estimate as carried out by the Planning Commission or the Registrar-General, in the absence of any official census figures”. It disapproved of the practice of sticking to figures of the previous census merely on the premise that the new figures on the poverty line had not been worked out.
Reverting to the Planning Commission’s criteria for determining the poverty line, the court reminded the government and the panel that there was a large section of the poor sitting on the fence with an only marginally higher income of `20 per day in urban areas and `15 in rural areas. “They also deserve food at subsidised rates,” the court said.
It pointed out that the Wadhwa Committee had referred to this group as “marginally above poverty line (MAPL)” but if the parameters of the intake of calories was applied to them, then there would hardly be any difference between the BPL and MAPL populations.
“We have no objection to the government providing universal food security. However, they must first ensure food security for the more vulnerable sections of society,” the bench said while finding fault in uniformly distributing 35 kg of food grains per BPL family without determining the actual number of members in a family. The court also criticised the government for allowing wastage of food grains, saying “about 55,000 tonnes of grain rotted in Punjab and Haryana and a very large chunk was destroyed in a recent fire in Punjab as the stock was lying in the open”.