In a big step away from party diktat that frowns upon questions and allegations against its policies even from outsiders, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader has openly challenged his own party’s scheme. BJP’s Savli MLA Ketan Inamdar has dashed off a letter to Chief Minister Vijay Rupani stating that “genuinely poor” people are being deprived of government schemes and sought a revision in the list of Below Poverty Line (BPL) category beneficiaries.
Questioning the state government’s claims, the MLA asserted, “Majority of those included in the government’s list of beneficiaries released after a BPL score survey does not need BPL benefits. As a result, many actual needy persons have been left out of this survey.”
Inamdar also cited instances of many who got allotments of housing scheme units under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, despite having “better standards of living”.
Explaining further, he stated in his letter that many BPL category beneficiaries were not “really needy persons” and stressed the need to revisit their list to include the “poorest of poor” to realise the “vision” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He said the beneficiaries had been picked from the old list of BPL families. “As I understand, only those from the old BPL list, who do not have homes or who live in temporary homes should be included in the PMAY list on priority. But the fact is that those who feature on the BPL list made in the past have different standards of living now.”
It may be recalled that Inamdar, who won from Savli as an Independent candidate the first time in 2012 after being denied a BJP ticket, had earlier resigned in a huff from the party expressing his frustration over neglected development works in his constituency. In 2017, he won on a BJP ticket.
