Opposition Congress today demanded to club amounts of different welfare programmes, thus enabling a BPL family get substantial money under the schemes that would raise its standard of living.
"Based on eligibility of its members, money earmarked for government welfare schemes for the BPL families like old age pension, works under MG-NREGA and widow pension should flow into a family as a whole," Jharkhand PCC president Sukhdeo Bhagat told PTI.
"This process (of total aggregating the amount) will raise the standard of living of a BPL family," Bhagat, whose party was a coalition partner in the previous Hemant Soren government, claimed.
Referring to the party demonstrations at different places on 'drought situation' recently, Bhagat demanded that the government make block-wise assessment to determine the situation.
The Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik's) Principal General Secretary, Pradip Yadav, said the party would soon begin demonstrations in Palamau division, demanding loan waiver to farmers, free distribution of seeds for Rabi crops and Rs 10,000 per acre to ease farmers' plight in the face of drought.
"We don't accept the central government's yardstick to assess drought relief. The assessment of drought situation should be made at the ground level, and the Raghubar Das government should immediately initiate relief measures to mitigate the farmers' distress," Yadav said.
He said the farmers had expected a good monsoon and invested in purchasing seeds, fertiliser and other things but were plagued by scanty rains.
