UJJWALA BOOST TO RURAL HOUSING SCHEME AS WELL

The NDA government’s flagship cooking gas scheme is likely to be linked to the rural housing scheme in order to provide wider coverage. An announcement on widening of the programme is likely to be made in Thursday’s Budget. Officials said the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana and the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana might be linked, which would add 10 million beneficiaries of the rural housing scheme. SHINE JACOB writes

The National Democratic Alliance government’s flagship cooking gas scheme is likely to be linked to the rural housing scheme in order to provide wider coverage. An announcement on widening of the programme is likely to be made in Thursday’s Budget.

Officials said the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) and the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) might be linked, which would add 10 million beneficiaries of the rural housing scheme automatically. In addition to this, the mandate of the PMUY is set to be expanded from 50 million to 80 million, with an additional budgetary support of ~48 billion. The Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe category may also be included in the expanded programme.

The beneficiaries of the PMAY (Gramin) are largely poor rural families without houses or which are living in houses with less than two rooms. The Narendra Modi government had identified 29.5 million such families under the socio-economic and caste census of 2011, of which 10 million are to be provided housing by March 2019 and the rest by 2022.

The PMUY, which was launched on May 1, 2016, in Ballia district in Uttar Pradesh, with a target of providing 50 million gas connections in three years to families living below the poverty line (BPL), has already covered 33.41 million consumers in 712 districts. “The Centre has allocated ~80 billion as budgetary support through which each family is receiving ~1,600. This is set to be increased by another 30 million now,” said an executive with an oil marketing company (OMC).

PUMY connections are now being given in the names of women, but oil firms are likely to provide connections to men as well. This comes at a time when questions are being raised on refills that BPL families are taking under the PMUY.

“When a consumer is refilling at an average 7.76 times per year, the rate of refill in the PMUY is 3.8 times per year. The number of consumers who have not come back for a second cylinder is only 15 per cent,” said Sanjiv Singh, chairman, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC).

Nearly 80 per cent of Ujjwala consumers come back to the OMCs for a second refill, while 45 per cent take three or more refills in a year. In order to maintain regular connection with new consumers and to sensitise them about the benefits of using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), OMCs like IOC, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation, and Bharat Petroleum Corporation had recently initiated a concept called LPG Panchayat in rural areas.