The State Government would be taking effective steps to review the list of BPL families in the Gram Sabha Meeting

Dharmshala------The State Government would be taking effective steps to review the list of BPL families in the Gram Sabha Meeting scheduled for First Sunday of April wherein every citizen should mark their presence. This was stated by Prof. Prem Kumar Dhumal, Chief Minister, in his presidential address he delivered in the 6th Meeting of the Other Backward Classes Welfare Board, at Dharamshala today.

Chief Minister said that complaints had been pouring in from different quarters questioning the eligibility of BPL beneficiaries, who were otherwise well to do and had good income. He said that many such influential families had been depriving various other genuine beneficiaries of the benefits they were eligible to draw. He said that mass awareness was required to be created amongst people to get sanction schemes in favour of deserving families so that development process was not hindered from the very grass root level. He directed the authorities to detect fake social security pensioners who were drawing benefits illegally. He said that efforts needed to be made to include OBC beneficiaries under the free coaching for various competitive examinations at National and State level

Chief Minister said that the State Government had adopted new norms to declare gram panchayats as backward which had been circulated for wider publicity amongst the public in general. He said that with the maximum attendance by the members of the panchayats, really deserving beneficiaries would be selected under different programmes. He thanked the non-official members for their valuable suggestions.

Smt. Sarveen Chaudhary, Social Justice and Empowerment Minister, also welcomed the Chief Minister and said that the schemes envisioned for the benefit of the OBCs were yielding desired results. She said that computer literacy, soft loan and other benefits were being made available to the members of the community. She thanked CM for enhancing the house building grant by Rs. 21,000 and also the income limit for eligibility which had been enhanced from Rs. 11,000 to Rs. 17,000 perannum. She said that ‘Beti Hai Anmol’ programme had also been started for BPL families, depositing Rs. 5100 in the name of the new born girl child for two girls to be paid in cash on attaining the age of 18 years.

Smt. Sarojini G.Thakur, Additional Chief Secretary, welcomed the Chief Minister and thanked him for convening the meeting of OBC Welfare Board.

Shri Maneesh Garg, Director, Social Justice and Empowerment conducted the proceedings of the meeting and replied to the quarries raised by the non-official members of the Board. He assured that all decisions taken in the meeting would be implemented in letter and spirit at appropriate level. Shri Ramesh Dhawala, Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Minister, Smt. Rajwant Sandhu, Chief Secretary, Principal Secretaries, Secretaries, Heads of various Departments, Deputy Commissioners and non-official members of the Board were present in the meeting.