Ahluwalia and Ramesh in New Delhi on Monday. Picture by Prem Singh

New Delhi, Oct. 3: The Planning Commission today said the controversial Rs 32-a-day poverty-line cap did not reflect its views, and the Centre stressed that the ceiling was not being used to determine who receives the benefits of welfare programmes.

The figure “will remain a relevant reference point” to gauge how development is helping lift more and more people out of poverty, plan panel deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia said.

A new methodology to determine welfare beneficiaries would be worked out by next January, anyway, “so that no poor and deprived household is excluded”, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh said at a joint news conference with Ahluwalia.

Both men also stressed that the proposed right to food law was exempt from any poverty-line estimates, and would target households under a formula recommended by experts in the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC).

“There is no linkage between the poverty estimates of the Planning Commission and the selection of beneficiaries under central government programmes,” Ramesh said.

A plan panel affidavit before the Supreme Court had sparked widespread criticism by defining a person living below the poverty line (BPL) as one unable to spend more than Rs 32 a day in an urban area, or Rs 26 a day in a rural area.

Some NAC members have ridiculed the criteria, and Rahul Gandhi is believed to have asked for a rethink. The apex court will hear the matter on October 11.

Ahluwalia said the ceilings were based on methodology prescribed by the Suresh Tendulkar Committee and did not reflect the Planning Commission’s views.

He tried to clarify the affidavit’s controversial claim that a person can meet the expenditures of “food, health and education” with these sums. He said the Tendulkar committee had assigned token expenditures under the heads of health and education since both are supposed to be free in India.

“But the public service system (in health and education) has not delivered. It is a shame. Now the focus is to improve these services in the 12th plan,” he said.

Ahluwalia spelt out the scope of the ceilings’ relevance: “The Tendulkar poverty line will remain a relevant reference point comparable to past estimates of poverty to see how development is helping to take more and more individuals above a fixed line over time and across states.”

He added: “It is clearly a rock-bottom level of existence. We know that households above this level also need support. Benefits should go to more people than those below the poverty line. We have supported this idea in the food security bill.”

Under the NAC’s recommendations, Ahluwalia said, highly subsidised food will reach 41 per cent of the population.

Ramesh played down the link between poverty estimates and welfare schemes in general, saying that of his ministry’s Rs 100,000-crore expenditure this year, only 9 per cent depended on the identification of BPL households.

Currently, schemes such as the public distribution system, health insurance and the National Social Assistance Programme are BPL-linked.

Ramesh said his ministry and the plan panel would set up an expert committee that would consult states, experts and civil society organisations to decide the methodology of selecting the beneficiaries of welfare schemes. “No caps will be externally imposed,” he said.

Still, Ahluwalia and Ramesh did not rule out a ceiling (determined by the experts and higher than the Tendulkar figures) for welfare schemes.

NAC member N.C. Saxena, however, rejected any cap that discriminates between poor families in the matter of government benefits.

“Apart from people who are automatically excluded from the BPL, meaning those who are well-off, the remaining people should get government support like subsidised rations, health insurance, old-age pension and housing assistance,” he said.