BHUBANESWAR: Criticising the State Government for not taking any action on revision of the below poverty list (BPL) list during the last 14 years, the Opposition Congress on Friday walked out of the Assembly. The issue cropped up during discussion on the admissibility of an adjournment motion notice with the Congress members alleging that BPL surveys subsequent to 1997 could not be completed due to lack of commitment from the State Government. Leader of the Opposition Bhupinder Singh wanted to know when will be the 2011 survey completed before leading the walkout by the Congress members. Congress chief whip Prasad Harichandan said many genuine poor people have been left out of the poverty alleviation programmes as the State Government still goes by 1997 BPL list. The Congress leader alleged that even though the State Government started validation survey on the 2002 BPL survey, it was stopped midway. Making a statement, Panchayatiraj Minister Maheswar Mohanty said that the state government has all commitment for completion of the survey but did not give any time limit. Mohanty said the State Government had requested the Centre to start the socio-economic and caste census (SECC)-2011 on September 15. He said that the survey is based on automatic exclusion, automatic inclusion and deprivation indicator. The minister said after exchange of several letters, the Centre provided 10,000 hand held device and asked the Electronic Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) to provide the required data entry operators. The State Government had requested for 33500 hand held device and 29,062 data entry operators for the survey work, he said. He said the State Government decided to start survey in only eight districts in the first phase because of shortage of handheld machines and data entry operators. Survey in Nabarangpur district was stopped because of the by-election, he said and added that it has now been started in seven districts. The minister said that out of the 18.4 lakh families in Malkangiri, Koraput, Nabarangpur, Rayagada, Kandhamal, Balangir, Kalahandi and Gajapati districts, survey of 5,74,821 families have been completed. He said the survey work in 23 districts will start after receiving the required machines and data entry operators. Ramchandra Kadam, Bhujabal Majhi, Durjodhan Gardia and Prafulla Majhi (all Cong) criticised the State Government for delaying the survey work.
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