Hyderabad: Families living below the poverty line have increased in Telangana State, when compared to the Telangana region of undivided Andhra Pradesh.
The number of people covered under white ration cards (which signify BPL) has increased from 2.24 crore to 2.81 crore and the cards increased from 80.91 lakh to 89.47 lakh. The increase is attributed to the steep increase in income ceiling to determine BPL families.
Earlier, white cards in undivided AP were issued to families with annual income of less than Rs 60,000 in rural areas and Rs 75,000 in urban areas. However, this limit was increased to Rs 1.50 lakh in rural areas and Rs 2 lakh in urban areas.
Civil supplies minister Etela Rajender told the TS Assembly on Saturday that the burden on state government had increased because it was providing subsidy rice to additional 90 lakh beneficiaries on its own. Earlier, each member in a BPL family was provided with 4 kg of rice at Rs 1 per kg with a upper ceiling of 20 kg per family.
The government has increased this to 6 kg per head without any upper limit. That means that a family of 10 members is eligible to get 60 kg of rice at Rs 1 per kg. With this, the TS subsidy burden on white card holders has more than doubled to Rs 7,200 per year.
“As per Centre’s BPL norms, only 1.91 crore people in TS are eligible for subsidised rice, for whom it is supplying rice at Rs 3 per kg with an upper ceiling of 5 kg per head. However, the government is subsidising the rice further by supplying it at just Rs 1 per kg and the quota has been increased to 6 kg per head,” Mr Rajender said.
To minimise rice subsidy burden to some extent, the government has sought replacement of wheat quota with rice as there are a few takers for wheat in the state.
“The Centre is supplying 8,000 metric tonnes of wheat per month to the state. However, we sought increase in rice quota by stopping wheat. However, the Centre has refused to do so. With this, we have decided to supply wheat to white card holders at a cheaper rate of Rs 2 per kg against original price of Rs 5 per kg,” Mr Rajender added.
He said the government had weeded out 11.24 lakh bogus cards so far and 24 lakh applications have been rejected as they were found to be ineligible.
