With Bihar government voicing its reservation against the below poverty line (BPL) survey being conducted by the Central government, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh is slated to visit Patna this Friday and clarify doubts over the socio-economic-cum-caste census (SECC), 2011, to break the deadlock over the BPL survey in the state. Ramesh’s move comes in the backdrop of Bihar Chief minister Nitish Kumar recently writing to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking his intervention to “roll back” the Centre’s decision to use a “pre-determined ceiling” on BPL numbers under the SECC. Claiming that some state governments “may want to inflate” BPL numbers to “attract more Central grants”, Nitish reminded the PM that the state government had suggested that the Centre set up of an independent BPL Commission along the lines of the Election Commission to ensure the BPL survey is “not subject to the pulls and pressures of day to day administration”. Bihar Chief Secretary had also voiced the state government’s reservations over the SECC being conducted by the Centre. The CS had said that as per the SECC norms the state government will have to deploy over 50,000 state government workers to conduct the survey and this was not feasible. In this context, Ramesh is likely to send Rural Development Secretary B K Sinha, Registrar General of India C Chandramauli along with Secretary of Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, which is entrusted with BPL survey in urban areas, to iron out the procedural difficulties raised by the state government. The move has been prompted by the fact that the Central government plans to complete the survey by December-end to ensure that the nation-wide BPL list is ready before the onset of the 12th five-year plan (2012-17). Incidentally, similar issues have been raised by the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. With UP slated to go for Assembly elections early next year, the onus will be on Ramesh to resolve the issue. The state government had earlier indicated its reservations against conducting the survey by the end of this year and instead offered to conduct it in February, closer to the Assembly polls.