New Delhi, Sept. 22: Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh today picked holes in the Planning Commission’s poverty estimate and suggested an alternative model seeking to do away with any pre-determined ceiling on the percentage of poor people.

Ramesh wrote a seven-page letter to Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, suggesting a more liberal method for determining who should be included in the Below Poverty Line (BPL) category and how the government’s welfare benefits should be delivered to them. According to the plan panel estimate, 37 per cent of the people — 26 per cent in urban areas and 42 per cent in villages — should be considered in the BPL category. The commission arrived at this estimate on the basis of the poverty line defined by an expert committee headed by Suresh Tendulkar.

The Tendulkar committee has suggested that a person should be considered poor if he spends less than Rs 447 per month in rural areas and Rs 578 per month in urban areas (both as per 2004-05 price index). When converted to the 2011 price level, the poverty line can be placed provisionally at Rs 781 per capita per month in rural areas and Rs 965 in urban areas.

This formula has been challenged in the Supreme Court. The commission on Tuesday submitted an affidavit in the apex court justifying its definition of poverty line. This has sparked off a controversy with members of the National Advisory Council, food right activists and NGOs criticising the commission’s stand. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and his Uttar Pradesh counterpart Mayavati have already written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh opposing the 37 per cent cap on BPL. The ministry of rural development has started a BPL survey to identify the 42 per cent people in rural areas who should fall under BPL. The ministry’s survey is based on three criteria — automatic exclusion, automatic inclusion and deprivations. In his letter, Ramesh today said the Planning Commission’s poverty estimate offers scope for errors. “It is very easy for Planning Commission to set the caps but even those who have been associated with the Tendulkar committee know that getting exact matches of the kind that they have ordered is nearly impossible,” Ramesh wrote in the letter.