Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan today distributed around 3,000 free LPG stoves under the free cooking gas scheme titled the "Ujjwala Yojana' here today and expressed hope that the Centre would be able to cover the entire megapolis in over two years.
Launching the scheme with distributing free cooking gas connection with a stove, lighter and a cylinder trolley, costing a little over Rs 6,000 per connection, he said though the city has only 18 lakh households, there are 22 lakh LPG connections and 6 lakh PNG connections, indicating that many many households still have multiple connections.
Out of the total cost, 50 per cent will be directly subsidised by the government and the rest of the cost will be borne by the oil marketing companies by way of interest free loans to consumers.
Under the first phase, close to 5,000 BPL households in north Mumbai will be covered before mid-September, Pradhan said, adding the remaining households will be covered over the next two-three years.
The minister, however, parried a direct answer when asked whether the ministry is planning to get the multiple connections cancelled saying his public call to surrender such connections would not fall on deaf ears.
When sought his views on the CAG observation that the government has blown up the subsidy savings by way direct cash benefit scheme, Pradhan said his ministry stands by its numbers but did not offer any explanation.
He said the Opposition Congress is interested only in the subsidy numbers while the report also spoke about the national loot that was happening under its watch. He again did not elaborate.
Pradhan claimed that since the voluntary surrender of LPG subsidies, his ministry could cancel as many as 3.5 crore fake connections leading to a saving of Rs 21,000 crore.
It can be recalled that on August 12, the national auditor CAG had picked holes in government claims saying savings from LPG subsidies paid directly to consumers was only about 15 per cent or Rs 1,764 crore, of what government has been claiming and that bulk of the savings was due to sharp fall in global crude prices.
"The actual subsidy payout during the period from April 2015 to December 2015 was Rs 12,084.24 crore as against Rs 35,400.46 crore during April 2014 to December 2014," the CAG said, adding of the Rs 23,316.12 crore savings in subsidy.
CAG said Rs 21,552.8 crore was on account of fall in crude oil price.
At the same time, "the effect on the same (subsidy
reduction) due to reduced off-take of cylinders by consumers worked out to Rs 1,763.93 crore. Thus it is evident that the lower subsidy rates in 2015-16 is, by far, the most significant factor resulted in subsidy savings," CAG said.
The oil ministry has claimed the savings from the elimination of fake/duplicate/ghost cooking gas LPG connection as a result of implementation of DBT in 2014-15 was Rs 14,818.4 crore. This, after considering an average subsidy of Rs 369.72 per cylinder for 3.34 crore blocked consumers.
The CAG said the ministry had in February 2016 estimated potential savings in LPG subsidy for 2015-16 at Rs 9,211 crore while the oil marketing companies put it at Rs 5,107.48 crore.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on May 1 soft-launched the Ujjwala scheme in Ballia in Uttar Pradesh, under which the government plans to give free cooking gas connections to all the 5 crore BPL families over the next three years which will involve Rs 8,000 crore outgo from the Central government kitty, a part of which is being partly funded from the savings of 'GiveItUp' initiative.
In the current year, 1.5 crore BPL families, identified through the Socio-Economic Caste Census of 2011, will be covered.
The country has 25 crore households, out of which only 18 crore have LPG connections.
Pradhan claimed that while the first LPG connections were distributed in then Bombay way back in 1955, till 2014, there were only 14 crore connections while his ministry in the past two years alone gave 4 crore connections.
Quoting the WHO data, he said as many as 5 lakh women die in the country due to non-communicable diseases, primarily caused by smoke emanating from their kitchens which use either kerosene stoves or cow dung cakes or firewood as cooking fuel, which is as good as smoke form 400 cigarettes.
