Lucknow, Oct 3 (IANS) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati Monday urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to reconsider the Planning Commission’s recommendation for fixing Rs.32 as the upper limit for determining poverty.


She shot off a letter to the prime minister seeking his intervention to raise this limit, which she felt, was “grossly impractical and far from reality".

She wondered: "How could experts sitting in the Planning Commission conceive that only those earning up to Rs.32 a day could fit into the definition of poor?"

“In view of the union government’s impractical approach, we have evolved our own scheme under the banner of ‘Mukhyamantri Mahamaya Garib Arthik Madad Yojana’ whereby we pay a monthly pension of Rs.400 to 25 lakh people not covered by the union government’s BPL (Below Poverty Line) scheme,” Mayawati said in the letter.

The Planning Commission recently informed the Supreme Court that poverty line could be provisionally placed at around Rs.32 in urban areas.