Biswa Bhusan Mohapatra
Post News Network
Bhubaneswar: The panchayati raj department has scrapped the lottery system for selecting beneficiaries for the Biju Pucca Ghar Yojna and decided to instead use the updated socio-economic caste census (SECC) 2011 data for the purpose, according to new guidelines issued recently.
The beneficiaries will now be selected from among people in houses of one or two rooms that have kuccha roofs and kuccha walls according to the SEC 2011 list, except the automatically excluded household, according to the guidelines.
Those having motorised two-, three-, or four wheelers and fishing boats; Kisan Credit Card with credit limit of `50,000 or above, will be automatically excluded.
The others who will be excluded include households where a member is a government employee, or earns more than `10,000 a month, pays income tax or professional tax, or owns a refrigerator or a landline phone.
This is in sharp contrast to the guidelines issued in June 2015, according to which the selection of beneficiaries will be done through lotteries conducted in a fair and transparent manner.
The government also said priority would be given based on the number of rooms in the order of houseless followed by zero, one and two rooms.
The government would also give priority to households that do not have an adult member in the 16-59 age group, those that have no adult member, as well as households with no literate adult above 25 years or those with a disabled member.
In cases where people have been affected by natural and manmade calamities, including fire, flood, elephant menace, communal violence, major law and order problem and earthquake, the beneficiaries will be selected by the district level committee (DLC).
The collector will head the panel, which will have MPs, MLAs, presidents of zilla parishads and project directors of the District Rural Development Agency as members. In case, the DLCs fail to approve the list within the specific timeline, the collectors will approve the list.
Panchayati raj secretary DK Singh defended the scrapping of the lottery system saying that the new system will benefit the needy.
“The updated SECC data is now available online and we can get details of people, including whether or not they have a house and if so of how many rooms.” he said.