NEW DELHI: The government has discontinued the practice of ranking states annually on the implementation of the Twenty-Point Programme, the Centre’s key initiative to eradicate poverty, a move that comes after the states ruled by the opposition BJP dominated the list for three consecutive years.Gujarat, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh fared better than most Congress-ruled states on the initiative envisaged by late prime minister Indira Gandhi to introduce social welfare schemes targeted at those living below poverty line.

“We discontinued the rankings as the practice was not leading to a harmonious environment. We wanted to encourage competition, but the government received bad press,” said an official of the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, explaining that Congress came off looking worse in comparison.

“The rankings were shown in the media as if BJP-ruled states were administratively better than Congress-ruled states. The Twenty Point Programme is not entirely about governance at the state level. So, a decision was taken at the minister’s level to stop the ranking system,” said the official. Despite repeated attempts by ET, statistics and programme implementation minister Srikant Jena could not be reached for comment.Since 2009-10, the fiscal for which the states were last ranked, the ministry’s monthly reports have revealed the performance of states on 15 welfare schemes. HP, under BJP chief minister PK Dhumal, dislodged Gujarat from top while Rajasthan proved to be the saving grace for Congress as it shared the second rank with the DMK-ruled Tamil Nadu.The other top spots were taken by the states ruled by BJP or its allies, with Gujarat ranked fourth, followed by Uttarakhand and Odisha. Gujarat and Rajasthan, both ruled by BJP at the time, had shared the top spot in the previous fiscal, while another BJP-ruled state, HP, shared the next rank with Congress-ruled AP.In 2007-08, the top three ranks were bagged by BJP-ruled Rajasthan, HP and Gujarat while the fourth rank was shared by Congress-ruled Haryana and AP. The officials say the ranking system did not present a true picture of the programme implementation as it measured the performance of states on just 15 of about 65 schemes.“This is because targets are measureable only in certain schemes. These 15 schemes are not even 50% of the total schemes covered under the entire programme. What was started as a way to encourage fair competition among states became a political tool. So we stopped it,” the official said. The ministry still presents a broad report card of states on social welfare schemes.The latest report is not encouraging for the Congress-ruled states, which are faltering on most parameters, including even initiatives of Congress such as devolution of powers to panchayati raj institutions. The report shows that Himachal, Gujarat, MP, Chhattisgarh , Karnataka, Bihar and Uttarakhand fared well under BJP. In contrast, there was minimal devolution of powers to the panchayats in Congress-ruled Haryana and Rajasthan.The BJP-ruled MP tops the list on food security, drawing maximum grain allocated for the targeted PDS with 104% offtake while Congress-ruled Delhi comes second with 102%. Congress-ruled Andhra and Nagaland are on a par with Himachal, with 100% offtake of grain under another scheme — Antyodaya Anna Yojana