LPG benefit transfer to roll out today

The government will roll out Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) for cooking gas across 676 districts on the first day of the new year, despite preparations on the ground being dissatisfactory.

Of the 153 million liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) customers in the country, only 63 million, or 43 per cent, have been linked to the new system so far under which cooking gas subsidy will be transferred directly into the bank accounts of the beneficiaries.

Government officials, however, defended the situation by saying they do not anticipate problems, since the customers will get three months of "grace" period to migrate to the new system. However, it was because of ground-level implementation issues that DBT in LPG was stopped at its first roll-out during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. The scale of the project that time was only half of what it is now - it covered only 292 districts.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government restarted DBTL in 54 districts in mid-November. So far, the department of petroleum has transferred subsidy worth Rs 624 crore to the bank accounts of two million customers.

States with high linkage of LPG connections and bank accounts include Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The ministry of petroleum needs to catch up in Odisha, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. A government official said preparedness at the ground level was not bad as the government had learnt its lessons from the previous time.

"There is more communication, better control over information and grievance redressal mechanisms have also been improved," said the official.

The ministry of petroleum has a much better hold over the project now than last time and has been closely monitoring the progress through regular communication with the district collectors, said the official.

Also, under the current scheme, consumers will get three months of grace period to link their connections with a bank account and Aadhaar. And, even after March, if their bank account details are not available, they will have to buy the LPG cylinder at the market price. However, the subsidy for the next three months will be stored in an escrow account, which they will receive as soon as they link their connections.

"So, they will not lose the subsidy but it will start pinching them. And we expect people to come onboard then," said the first official.

Under the current scheme, linking the beneficiaries' bank account with Aadhaar is not mandatory even though the government is encouraging consumers to link their connections with both bank accounts and the UID number.

Linking with Aadhaar is expected to weed out fakes and duplicates from the system. Out of the over 60 million consumers linked so far, 50 million have furnished both bank account and Aadhaar number details, while the rest 10 million have linked the connections through their bank accounts only.

Another official added that the numbers are increasing rapidly. "Instead of mass level campaigning, the government has chosen to do subtle messaging this time through SMSs etc, which is more targeted," said the second official.

Aadhaar has so far enrolled 728 million people and claims to have covered 75 per cent of the population in 16 states and union territories including Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi among others.