Jammu, Oct 1 (IANS) A villager from Ramban district of Jammu and Kashmir Saturday said he has sent demand drafts of Rs.26 — the Planning Commission’s poverty line cut-off for rural areas — to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and the commission’s Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahulwalia and asked them to show how to spend a day on that amount.
Darvinder Singh, a resident of Bhagote village in Ramban, about 130 km north of Jammu, said the Planning Commission’s classification of poor was an ‘insult to crores of poor of the country’.
He has also sent a letter with the demand drafts, according to a release which he e-mailed to media houses across the state.
In his letter, Singh asked the three senior leaders to spend a day on Rs.26 and let the other poor people of the country know how they fare on this meagre amount.
Singh said despite soaring inflation, the commission was making ‘illogical, unjustifiable and unrealistic claims’.
He also urged the prime minister to ‘withdraw the affidavit submitted in the Supreme Court to save further embarrassment to the poor’.
The Planning Commission recently told the Supreme Court that poverty line for urban and rural areas could be provisionally placed at Rs.965 per capita per month (Rs.32 per day) and Rs.781 per capita per month (Rs.26 per day) respectively.
