National: By-elections are to be held on ten assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, before this the Yogi government of the state has opened the box of gifts. The state government is going to start an ambitious scheme to rescue the families living in extreme poverty by giving them a lump sum relief package. This scheme is going to start in the name of 'Zero Poverty Scheme'. Under the scheme, eligibility list will be prepared from every village and they will be saturated with all the schemes of the government. CM Yogi Adityanath can start the scheme this month itself. 

Om Prakash Rajbhar, Minister of Panchayati Raj Department and Minority Welfare Department of the state, said that Panchayati Raj Department has been made the nodal department of this scheme. All the departments related to the development and public welfare of villages including Social Welfare, Backward Class Department, Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Swachh Bharat Mission, Village Development Department, Food and Logistics will be made partners in this scheme. All these departments will benefit the selected families through their respective schemes. There are a total of 57691 Gram Panchayats in the state, which have about 85 thousand villages.

These families will get the benefit of the scheme.
Under the scheme, 10 to 25 such families will be selected from all the villages, who are living in extreme poverty and have not been able to get the benefit of government schemes. The list of such families will be prepared by the Social Welfare Department at the initial level. After verification by the headquarters level team, the families included in the final list will be benefited from all the schemes.

The government believes that the families benefiting from all the schemes will automatically come above the poverty line. It is also being said that this scheme has been made in view of the by-elections to be held on 10 assembly seats in the state. Mostly SC-ST and OBC category families will benefit from the scheme.