Rajya Sabha MP and Assam PCC president Ripun Bora on Wednesday alleged that the process of selecting beneficiaries in the state for central economic packages related to the nationwide lockdown was “inhuman and partisan”.

In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bora wrote that at this crucial time, when Modi was “devoting every moment to rescuing India’s crores of people from the coronavirus pandemic and countrywide lockdown” he had no alternative but to seek his intervention for providing justice to the poor and needy people of Assam.

“As a public representative, I am duty-bound to place before you the voices of the millions of poor people of Assam, the way they are being deprived and discriminated by BJP leaders in getting the benefits of the economic packages recently announced by central and state governments,” he wrote.

He said without any written guidelines from the government, block-level BJP leaders, on the instruction of local BJP MLAs and ministers, were going door to door in villages to prepare beneficiary lists, thus violating lockdown guidelines, including social distancing.

Besides, he alleged, while preparing the lists, the BJP workers were “deliberately” excluding Congress workers and sympathisers and other persons not belonging to the BJP. “This has created resentment in the state. In some places, some unscrupulous BJP workers are demanding money from the poor for inclusion of their names in the beneficiary list,” he further alleged.

He urged the Prime Minister to direct the state government to “desist” from preparing beneficiary lists for different schemes by discriminating against and depriving the poor and needy people on political ground. He demanded that the benefits of the schemes must reach all needy and deserving people and should be distributed in a transparent way.