New Delhi
The Central government on Monday apprised the Rajya Sabha that there is no hindrance in achieving the targets set for Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY)–a flagship scheme of the current dispensation to provide LPG cylinder to rural and deprived households.
Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Rameswar Teli informed the Upper House through a written reply to a question raised by Telangana Rashtra Samithi MP K.R. Suresh Reddy that the target set for the scheme was achieved earlier than expected.
Reddy had asked, “whether the government is aware of the fact that lack of infrastructural requisites in the house, delay in the installation process, and the gaps in the identification of beneficiaries prevent the PMUY scheme from achieving targets.”
To this, the minister replied that “No Sir, the target of providing eight crore LPG connections under PMUY was achieved on September 7, 2019, seven months ahead of the target date of completion of March 2020.”
“PMUY 2.0 was launched on August 10, 2021, and the target of one crore connections were provided within six months by January 2022,” the reply reads.
The Minister last week had also informed the House that “per capita consumption of PMUY beneficiaries has increased from 3.01 refills in 2019-20 to 3.66 refills in current Financial Year (till February 2022)”.
Teli then had said that per capita consumption of PMUY beneficiaries was “3.01 refills in 2019-2020, 4.39 in 2020-2021 and 3.66 in 2021-2022 (February 2022)”.
“A total of Rs 23,666 crore was utilized in DBTL-PAHAL in 2020-21 as against revised estimate of Rs 23,666 crore. For the current year as against revised estimate of Rs 3,400 crore, Rs 130 crore has been utilized till December 2021,” Minister said.
The PMUY scheme was launched by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MOPNG) in 2016 with an objective to make clean cooking fuels such as LPG available to rural and deprived households which were otherwise using traditional cooking fuels such as firewood, coal, cow-dung cakes.
The scheme was launched in May 2016 in Ballia, Uttar Pradesh by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The target under the scheme was to release 8 crore LPG Connections to the deprived households by March 2020.
On September 7, 2019, Prime Minister Modi handed over the eighth crore LPG connection in Aurangabad, Maharashtra.
The release of 8 crores of LPG connections under the scheme has also helped in increasing the LPG coverage in the country from 62 per cent on May 1, 2016, to 99.8 per cent on April 1, 2021.
