Cooking gas scheme to cover men, too

After officially reaching 33.1 million families in 712 districts, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana ( PMUY) says it is becoming gender-neutral.

So far, it offered free cooking gas connections to only women in Below Poverty Line (BPL) families. “We are now planning to include men in the socio-economic caste census (SECC) list, too, under the PMUY. There are BPL families where there are no women or women are not in a movable state due to health reasons. In such cases, we are looking to extend the PMUY to menfolk as well,” said an official.

The scheme began on May 1, 2016, at Ballia district in Uttar Pradesh. The plan was to provide 50 million gas connections in three years to BPL families, for which the government allocated ~80 billion as budget support or ~1,600 to each family. The ministry of petroleum and natural gas is set to approach the Cabinet soon to expand the programme, with additional budgetary support of ~48 billion.

Sources indicate nearly 80 per cent of Ujjwala consumers come back to the oil marketing companies (OMCs) for a second refill, while 45 per cent take three or more refills a year. To maintain regular connection with the new consumers, to sensitise them about the benefits of using LPG (cooking

gas), the three governmentowned OMCs recently initiated a concept termed LPG Panchayat in rural areas.

As of November, India had 251.1 million domestic LPG consumers. Of these 121.2 million were of Indian Oil Corporation, 64 million of Bharat Petroleum Corporation, and 65.9 million with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation. However, of these, only 214 million are active consumers, says the ministry’s Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell.

Pushed by the PMUY, the consumption of LPG in 2016-17 rose almost 10 per cent to 21.5 million tonnes (mt), compared to 19.6 mt in 2015-16. Total consumption has seen positive growth continuously for the past 51 months. The rise was 8.8 per cent for the first eight months of the current financial year. Cumulative subsidy on LPG and kerosene for the first six months of the financial year was ~90 billion.

According to Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, an additional 30 million connections under the PMUY will lead to investment of ~3 billion by OMCs.