Cooking gas consumers who have voluntarily surrendered their subsidy under the GiveItUp campaign will be allowed to reclaim their subsidy entitlement after a gap of a year, Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan said.
So far, nearly 11.3 million consumers have shed their LPG subsidy responding to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to surrender subsidy for the benefit of their poor brethren.
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“GiveItUp consumers can take back their subsidy but only after one year. But, our analysis has shown that economics is not a consideration for people who have participated in the GiveItUp campaign,” said Pradhan, responding to a question on what happens if an individual desires to reclaim subsidy when crude prices go up in future, jacking up the quantum of the dole.
Speaking at an event to announce participation of 11 million LPG consumers in the GiveItUp campaign here, Pradhan said he hoped households would not use subsidy even if the quantum of the LPG dole goes up to Rs 5,000 annually from the current Rs 1,200 a year. The subsidy given by the government on every cylinder of LPG has come down to Rs 90 compared to around Rs 350 when GiveItUp was launched a year ago.
Pradhan said Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have topped the list of states and Union territories with the highest number of GiveItUp consumers, but refused to share the names of states in the bottom of the list.
“Around six million poor households have been given new LPG connections in the past year as a result of 11.3 million surrendering their subsidy,” he added.
The minister also announced that PM Modi would officially launch the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana from Balia district in Uttar Pradesh on May 1. The scheme aims at providing 15 million LPG connections to below-poverty-line households in the current financial year (2016-17) at a cost of Rs 2,000 crore.
The government would use Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) database to identify the beneficiary base of the scheme, Pradhan said.
The oil ministry expects the demand for LPG in the country to go up to 30 million tonnes (mt) per annum in the next three years from the current 21 mt as a result of the growth in the consumer database due to the Ujjwala scheme, that aims to provide 50 million new connections in three years at a cost of Rs 8,000 crore. “As a result, India’s import dependence for LPG supply might go up to 55 per cent from the current 40 per cent,” Pradhan noted.
He also said that the petroleum ministry would soon take a decision on introducing a common tax rate for all the three kinds of LPG users – domestic, non-domestic (commercial) and auto industrial – in the interest of administrative convenience. Also, the ministry will soon expand in tier-II cities its initiative to seek affidavits stating income levels from LPG consumers. The idea is to stop LPG subsidy for individuals with a taxable income of above Rs 10 lakh a year.
