The SC on Friday wanted to know Centre’s response to a petitioner’s allegation that over 7 crore below poverty line (BPL) families have been left out of the ambit of the public distribution system (PDS) and deprived of subsidised foodgrains.
A Bench comprising Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma asked Attorney General G E Vahanvati, who was busy in another court, to respond to this charge by November 11. Petitioner NGO People’s Union for Civil Liberties through counsel Colin Gonsalves had told the court that this gap in numbers was a result of government’s insistence on supplying foodgrains through PDS as per 1991 census and not as per the current population estimates.
The Bench said as per the census figures the population was estimated at 117.67 crores in 2010, whereas it was 99.69 crores in the year 2000 and the petitioner claims that approximately 7 crore BPL families have come into existence and they have been left out of the PDS.