'91 pc households with LPG connection have bank account'

Seeking dismissal of a petition against modified direct benefit transfer scheme for domestic LPG supply, Government today told the Madras High Court that 91 per cent of households (with LPG connection) had bank accounts and efforts were being taken to cover the remaining.
A bench comprising Chief Justice S K Kaul and Justice S Tamilvanan of the Madurai Bench of the court posted the matter for hearing to February 26.
In a counter, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas Under Secretary A Ushabala said banks would hold special camps at their branches nearest to the LPG distributors for opening accounts for Direct Benefit Transfer of LPG (DBTL) beneficiaries.

There should not be any problem for the LPG consumers to start bank accounts, as contested by the petitioner, she said.
She also said the scheme's two goals were efficiency and transparency in subsidy administration. Already one crore connections had been blocked for failure to meet the department's Know Your Customer (KYC) norms, saving recurring subsidy to the tune of Rs 3,948 crore per year.
The counter said the Modified Benefit Transfer of LPG (MBTL) for LPG subsidy had been introduced as the consumers would not require Aadhaar card for the present. Almost all the consumers in Tamil Nadu would have bank account in a short span. Even at places where there were no banks, special desks would be set up to collect applications for account opening.

She also pointed out that under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana programme, 9.47 crore accounts had been opened in the country and of them 6.98 crore were zero-balance accounts, indicating there was no need for the poor people to pay money for starting account.

The counter also said KYC and de-duplication process prior to release of new connection had prevented eight to ten per cent of duplicate PG connections.
The Modified Direct Benefit Transfer of LPG (MDBTL) system was introduced only to weed out duplicate and ineligible connections. It enabled achieve two goals -- efficiency and transparency in subsidy administration.

Even the original Aadhaar card linked subsidy transfer helped the governemnt detect one per cent duplicate connection among the 4.2 crore Addhaar card holders with LPG.
The orginal DBTL scheme has been kept in abeyance and was being reviewed by a committee headed by Prof S G Dhande, of IIT-Kanpur.
The official sought to dismiss the petition, filed by one S M Ananthamurugan, who sought a direction from the court to the ministry not to take steps to implement the DBTL system and Bank account based domestic LPG gas connection and supply of refill gas cylinders.