With the help of the 2004-05 National Sample Survey Organisation unit level consumption expenditure data, this paper tries to estimate the extent of inclusion and exclusion errors in the identification of below-thepoverty line households. In spite of continuous efforts towards improving the methodology of the BPL census, a significant difference between the "estimated" and the "identified" poor still persists. Against this backdrop, this paper attempts to develop an alternative method based on "vulnerability criteria" for the identification of the poor. Estimation shows that the prescribed criteria not only reduce the exclusion error significantly, but also suggest inclusion of a larger number of vulnerable households in the BPL list. Because of the data limitations, this exercise remains tentative. Nevertheless, it sets the possibility of further exploration to address the issue of large-scale errors.
