Veerappa Moily describes DBTL scheme a success

Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dr. M. Veerappa Moily has said that implementation of Direct Benefit Transfer for LPG (DBTL) scheme has been a matter of great satisfaction and that the DBTL scheme has been a success especially considering the scale and scope of the scheme.

Chairing a review meeting on DBTL scheme here today, Dr. Moily announced, "after the launch of the scheme on 01.06.2013, within 6 weeks, we have been able to complete 2.28 million transactions, touching lives of 1.25 million LPG households amounting to Rs. 91 crore."

He stressed that the success of the scheme can be attributed to the unflinching leadership of Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and their deep commitment to improve the delivery of public services through use of modern technology and robust preparatory work done by all stakeholders.

The scheme covers 72 lakh consumers, 600 distributors, and 19 districts across the length and breadth of India.

"Such a large direct cash transfer programme may not have been taken up so far anywhere in the world," Dr Moily said.

Striking a note of caution, he pointed out, "While the scheme may be termed a success, we cannot become complacent. Therefore, I have asked my officers to visit all the districts and get first hand feedback and assess the field level problems in the scheme so that we can make mid-course corrections."

Underlining the major challenges ahead, he said that there is a need to improve LPG seeding to reach at least 80 percent from the current level of 65 percent and bank seeding also to ramp up rapidly from the current level of 36 percent to the same level by August 31, 2013, i.e. when the grace period of three months expires for those who do not have both LPG consumer number and their bank account seeded with Aadhaar number.

Dr. Moily also informed that PSU Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) have already devised a reward mechanism to incentivize the LPG dealers to do the seeding in LPG database expeditiously.

He urged banks and Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to improve the seeding and issue Aadhaar numbers expeditiously for balance customers.

"Our aim is that when market pricing is implemented on 31.8.13, no LPG consumer who wants to join the scheme should be left out," he said.

Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas P. Lakshmi, Unique Identification Authority of India chairman Nandan Nilekani, Petroleum Secretary Vivek Rae and DBT Mission Director S. Sundareshan attended the meeting along with CMDs of IOC, BPCL and HPCL.

Senior officers from other stakeholders were also present.

Nilekani stated that the implementation of DBTL so far has been an outstanding success involving a large number of customers and a complex process.