Farzana Raja still holds the fort at the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) with a fleet of six official vehicles including a luxurious car, given to her as chairperson, with the rank and status of a federal minister, informed sources told Business Recorder.
The sources also claimed that she is still as influential as she was during the PPP-led government and decisions, if any are being taken, are not possible without taking her into confidence. "In short she still rules BISP [and] there is nobody more powerful than her even during the interim government," they added.
They further said that Farzana Raja had planned to go to the US for a medical check-up but decided to defer her departure till after the elections. The BISP is the PPP government's flagship social safety programme and is widely regarded as the only successful programme that provided targeted subsidies.
According to sources, the media reports fearing concerns that the social safety net programme may be used by the PPPP as a tool to rig the upcoming general elections, is quite logical as Farzana, a die-hard PPP jiyala, is still wholly-solely in-charge of BISP.
The credibility of BISP - a social safety net programme named after PPP leader Benazir Bhutto, has long been questioned by different political parities and some have expressed reservations about associating it with the leader of a particular political party instead of giving it a neutral name acceptable to all political parties.
The beneficiaries of the programme appear to be concentrated in PPP strongholds in contrast to areas where the presence of PPP is not so strong. Multan, the former Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani's hometown, has almost half the population of Lahore which is the stronghold of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), yet has twice as many families receiving Rs 1,000 monthly stipend from the government.
The apparent anomalies have led to resentment, and accusations of nepotism, not just from the opposition, but government allies too. The lawmakers say that districts and constituencies considered PPP stronghold have a disproportionately high number of people considered eligible for cash handouts. The opposition openly accuses the government of using the BISP as a political tool since its inception in 2008. According to details, Punjab, with more than twice the population of Sindh, has two-thirds of the number of families considered eligible for income support relative to Sindh. Punjab, a stronghold of PML-N, has the lowest ratio of beneficiary families - 1,974 families per 100,000 people - of the four federating units.
Sindh, the stronghold of PPP, has three-and-a-half times that ratio - 6,829 families per 100,000 people. Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa and Balochistan, where PPP was part of coalition governments with its allies - Awami National Party (ANP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid - trail Sindh with 5,155 and 4,858 beneficiary families per 100,000 people, respectively. Both Gilgit-Baltistan, an autonomous territory, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, a self-governing state, had governments aligned with the PPP and have 2,400 and 1,518 beneficiary families per 100,000 people receiving income support, respectively.