Rural households having a member earning more than Rs. 10,000 a month or anyone serving in a government or government-aided organisation or owning a landline phone will not be included in the below poverty line category in the new poverty census being conducted by states.However, the new census, which also includes questions about religion and castes, will compulsory include rural households without shelter, destitutes living on alms, manual scavengers, primitive tribal groups and legally released bonded labourers as BPL.
According to guidelines laid down by the union rural development ministry, the BPL list in villages will not include households who hold at least one kisan credit cards with a limit of Rs. 50,000 or above, or have motorised fishing boats of any make (two/three or four wheelers), or those who have registered their enterprise with the government.
Households paying income tax or professional tax, or those who have three or more rooms with pucca walls, or have 2.5 acre or more irrigated land or five acres of land irrigated for two or more crop season will
also not form part of BPL census, which will be concluded by December.
The remaining households, based on exclusion criteria and a compulsory inclusion list, will be assigned scores based on the deprivation indicator that they satisfy.
The deprivation indicators include households with only one room with kuccha walls or kuccha roof, those with no adult members between 16 and 59 years of age, female-only households with no adult member, those with no able-bodied adult member or disabled member, SC and ST households, landless households deriving a major part of their income from manual casual labour and those who don't have literate adult above 25 years of age.
A deprivation score based on the indicators would be derived for each households which will vary from 0 to 7.
"For the purpose of coverage under welfare schemes, households eligible for compulsory inclusion will have the highest priority, followed by those who have higher deprivation scores," the guidelines said.
It also said the deprivation cut-off should be set in a manner so that the total percentage of poor households should be less than or equal to the cut-off poverty ratio as prescribed by the Planning Commission.
