Patna, April 27: Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) has not updated the list of below poverty line (BPL) families living in areas under its jurisdiction for the past four years.
Even after Patna High Court passed a judgment asking the civic body to revise the list, the work could not be started.
The PMC prepared the first BPL list in 2007.
Earlier, Vinay Kumar Pappu, the present deputy mayor of PMC, had filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the high court in January, 2010 against the non-revision of the list since 2007.
“The judgment on the PIL came last September. The court directed PMC and the Patna district magistrate (DM) to prepare the revised BPL list,” said Vinay Kumar Pappu, then commissioner of ward number 28.
Afzal Imam, the PMC mayor said the BPL list has been prepared only once in 2007. Presently, the civic body is in the final stage of rectifying that list and sending it to the urban development department.
Earlier, for the purpose of providing economic benefits or food at subsidised rates, the Centre had issued directions to identify people living below poverty line under Swarn Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana.
The department, through an official circular dated October 17, 2006, made the DM as well as the municipal commissioner-cum-chief executive officer of different municipal corporations responsible for completing the survey of BPL families.
According to norms related to family survey and its revision, the urban development department circular states that preparation of BPL list is a continuous process. After the preparation of the initial list, objections are invited in the first week of May and examination for the objections are to be carried out by the third week of May every year.
According to the circular, the objections should be disposed of by the last week of May. Verification of BPL list has to be done in May-June and the final list is to be published by July 15 every year.
“The first BPL list for urban Patna was made available to the department in 2007, for which objection and revision work was done and the second BPL list, incorporating all rectifications was published in 2009. The same was supposed to be revised for 2009-10 and a rectified list was to be made available to us within the deadline (July 15, 2010) but no such correspondence has been made to us by any of the authorities concerned,” said D.K. Shukla, special secretary of the department.
Shukla said verification of BPL list for 2009 was finalised first and then the verification of urban area was started which could be reason behind the delay.
Ward councillors, on the other hand, are fed up. “The babus in PMC don’t take any initiative to do any work. None of the officials in the corporation want to take responsibility for this discrepancy and we, the public representatives, have to face the public. The names of BPL families are not being added to the list. It becomes difficult for us to address their grievances, as we don’t want to make any false promises. The executing officials are completely errant and careless,” said Vinay Kumar, councillor of ward number 20 from Punaichak.
