E-Paper
Govt to give 3.50 lakh sarees
THE MUALAYAM Singh Yadav-led government is bent on distributing nearly 3.50 lakh sarees to women. The latest sop is being extended to women having the BPL or Antodaya cards. The government has asked the officials to carry out a survey of the exact strength of women to be given two sarees each. In fact, the proposition has been altered to support budgetary allocations for the scheme.
THE MUALAYAM Singh Yadav-led government is bent on distributing nearly 3.50 lakh sarees to women.
The latest sop is being extended to women having the BPL or Antodaya cards.
The government has asked the officials to carry out a survey of the exact strength of women to be given two sarees each. In fact, the proposition has been altered to support budgetary allocations for the scheme.
Earlier, the Chief Minister had promised to provide two sarees each to the poor women. The officials, after making a lot of efforts, could find out the number of women the women to be given the sarees.
However, the government developed cold feet when it learnt that 1.5 crore women were eligible for the two sarees. And the total cost of this generosity was, at least, 10 times higher than it had expected.
Thus, the government decided to cover only those women who possess BPL or Antodaya cards. “The orders are for a survey to ascertain exact strength of the women entitled to sarees,” said an official.
He maintained the order did not specify whether the government would distribute sarees to one or more than one women of the household. However, the officials have been asked to identify if there are more than one women in the family. Statistics show that there are 1,11,398 BPL and Antodaya card holders in the rural areas and the total strength of women is 1,37, 911 and in urban areas, there are 63,911 card-holders. The survey to find out women’s strength is on.
The officials said if one woman was picked up from each family, the strength would touch the 1.75 lakh.
“The strength is just 10 per cent of what was ascertained earlier,” said an official.
Meanwhile, the ration offices are flooded with applications for issuance of new cards. But the all applications are being turned down as the Centre fixes the quota for such ration cards.
District magistrate Anurag Srivastava said the survey was on and soon the list would be made available to the State Government.
