Puncha, June 16: Almost a fortnight after Haldi Mahali died on his wife’s lap after living on water for three days, the authorities sat up.

All 20 block development officers of Purulia have been told to fan out to the villages and identify those living in “abject poverty”.

If at all the officers land up at the right places, they would see many like Haldi, 70, who survive on Rs 5.47 a day before death.

At Ramaidi village in the Puncha block, 260 km from Calcutta, half of the 100-odd families appeared impoverished and suffering from malnutrition.

Haldi’s widow Basanti said after his death, the block development officer had appeared on June 13 with 12 kg of rice, a sari and a tarpaulin sheet. It was the same day that Anuradha Talwar, the state adviser to the Supreme Court’s commissioner on the right to food and work wrote to chief secretary Asok Gupta, alerting him on the situation.

Thandi Mahali, 62, Baishakhi Mahato, 61, Kanai Mahali, 60, have learnt to live with poverty. They are not part of any poverty alleviation scheme. They have not been identified among those living below poverty line either.

Guamoni Mandi, the chief of the local CPM-run Nopara gram panchayat, said she did not know how many villagers had been included in the below poverty line list.

She also did not know that her deputy, Ashok Mahato, a wealthy farmer, was among the few who were enjoying the benefits reserved for the poorest of poor.

Joint block development officer Surjya Kumar Jana claimed that he had taken personal initiative to reach relief to two residents of an adjoining village, Phulshan Bibi and Yasin Ansari.

District magistrate Mukul Sarkar said he has instructed all the BDOs to keep their office open on weekends.

“Their office has to work every day of the week to identify those suffering from abject poverty. The BDOs have been instructed to work in coordination with the panchayats, locate those in extremely wretched and poor condition and provide relief.”

Doctors at the Puncha block hospital gave a peek into the poverty. Many queue up at the hospital with reports of illness to secure admission so that they get two square meals a day, one of them said.

“Come to my quarters, you will see a woman in the courtyard. She had come to the hospital, but was not suffering from any disease. I am offering food to her in my house,” said block medical officer Ramesh Kisku.