The government may not use the poverty line as the benchmark for selecting beneficiaries for government welfare programmes, despite a strong demand for it. The States as well as NITI Aayog believe that the line should be used only for tracing poverty and its reduction rather than using it for implementation of government programmes, Arvind Panagariya, Vice-Chairman, NITI Aayog, told journalists at a press conference in Hyderabad on Wednesday. Disclosing the discussions at the first regional consultative meeting on elimination of poverty with representatives of the southern States organised by the NITI Aayog, he said the participating States had almost agreed on fixing the benchmark for determining poverty line in such a way that abject poverty could also be measured. As of now there is no common definition of poverty line as two panels headed by Suresh Tendulkar and C Rangarajan had deployed different formulae to determine the poverty line such as varied rural and urban minimum expenditure, among others. The use of poverty line as basis for execution of government programmes had already become obsolete as most of the programmes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA) and the Food Security Act (FSA) were universal programmes, Panagariya said. The State-specific programmes could also come up with their own criteria of eligibility for beneficiaries, he added.