CHENNAI: Two days after restricting distribution of Rs 1,000 Pongal cash gift to ration card holders belonging to below poverty line and low-income group only, the Madras high court on Friday modified its order and permitted the state to extend the gift to 'sugar card' holders also.“Since a responsible officer has submitted through a sworn affidavit that those with non-priority household only for sugar (NPHH-S) cards also fall under the below poverty line category, we are permitting the government to distribute the cash gift to balance 5,98,772 falling under this category,” a division bench of Justice M Sathyanarayanan and P Rajamanickam said.The bench passed the order while allowing a modification application moved by the Tamil Nadu government.When the plea came up for hearing, advocate-general Vijay Narayan submitted that most of the families in NPHH-S category also belonged to economically weaker background."The numbers of such families cannot be arrived at this juncture as the economic indices are not available, as the government is issuing the family cards on the basis of residential proof only. Out of 10,11,330 NPHH-S card holders as on Thursday, 4,12,558 card holders have received the gift. The balance card holders under this category, most of whom are also from below poverty line category, are affected and are highly disappointed by non-receipt of the benefit,” Narayan said.On December 9, the bench passed an interim order preventing the state from distributing the cash gift to ‘non-priority household only for sugar’ (NPHH-S) and ‘no commodity’ (NC) category of cardholders.The state was permitted to distribute the cash gift to other three categories – ‘all commodities including rice’ (PHH), ‘all commodities including 35kg of rice’ (PHH-AAY), and ‘all commodities including rice’ (NPHH).

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