I'm running into the same issue now and don't have the blueprint.xml file reference in my pom either. My handler class is decorated as @Component and a component scan specified in the applicationContext.xml.
The component seems to be getting initialized twice (when the bundle is installed), as seen in the log line from the constructor -
2014-12-05 02:09:44,274 INFO [org.motechproject.nms.events.Handler] Initialized handler
[INFO] Initializing Spring FrameworkServlet 'servlet_33'
2014-12-05 02:09:44,373 INFO [org.motechproject.nms.events.Handler] Initialized handler
[INFO] Initialized servlet for org.motechproject.nms [149]
This causes 2 listeners to be registered on the same event and 2 actions performed for every event -
2014-12-05 02:11:49,951 INFO [org.motechproject.nms.web.MAController] Received call to status API @ 2014-12-05T10:11:49.951Z
2014-12-05 02:11:52,810 INFO [org.motechproject.nms.web.MAController] Called save bookmark
2014-12-05 02:11:52,812 INFO [org.motechproject.nms.service.impl.MAServiceImpl] Got bookmark event, sending it
2014-12-05 02:11:52,860 INFO [org.motechproject.nms.events.Handler] handled event for bookmark save with name: 2014-12-05T02:11:52.811-08:00
2014-12-05 02:11:52,864 INFO [org.motechproject.nms.events.Handler] handled event for bookmark save with name: 2014-12-05T02:11:52.811-08:00