Ujjwala Yojana is successful: Minister

Over 60 per cent LPG consumers under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) have booked at least four refills, demonstrating success of the initiative, designed to cut use of polluting fuel for cooking, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Tuesday.

Addressing the launch of the India chapter of WINLPG, the global network for promotion of women in the LPG industry, Pradhan also said that in view of a Supreme Court ban on use of highly polluting petroleum coke (petcoke) in the National Capital Region (NCR), the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) industry should make all efforts to increase its market share in the country.

"As per our data feedback from the Ujjwala Yojana, more than 60 per cent of consumers on an average have gone for four cylinders," Pradhan said.

"The Supreme Court has banned petcoke... the LPG industry should jump to fill the void and increase its business as much as possible," he said.

Although household use of the clean fuel has increased exponentially in India, "commercial use of LPG should increase", the Minister said.

"Overall, we have reached 77 per cent LPG penetration for households and hope that in the next few years, we would be reach 100 per cent," he said.

In this connection, Pradhan lauded the wide diffusion of auto LPG in the Karnataka capital of Bengaluru and said the Indian Oil Corp has designed a "Nano LPG which has high calorific value".

Noting that there are currently 19,000 LPG distributors in the country, with many of them being women, Pradhan said the industry has become a "Rs 1 lakh crore business in India".

--IANS

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