Modi government's efforts raised LPG subscription by 26%: Dharmendra Pradhan

BHUBANESHWAR: LPG penetration has gone up by 26 per cent thanks to his government’s push, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan said.

Out of India's estimated 28 crore households, 17.4 crore households have access to LPG which is up from the 13 crore household in May 2014, he said. Pradhan was speaking at a two-day international conference on LPG cooking gas in Bhubaneswar. "LPG has been seen as a commercial product in India and was never considered as a catalyst of social change," said Pradhan.

The Centre hopes to change this, bringing clean fuel to millions of households in the country. Stating that the government's priority was to plug leaks in subsidy schemes, Pradhan said his ministry has been particularly successful in this regard, scoring big on PAHAL or Direct Benefit Transfer in LPG, and the minister has himself campaigned aggressively for people to give up cooking gas subsidy.

"Successful implementation of PAHAL has resulted in estimated savings of more than Rs 21,000 crore through elimination of duplicate, fake, and ghost consumers," he said.

He now hopes to make a similar success of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana scheme. He said, millions in rural India continue to use traditional sources of cooking fuels such as wood, cow dung, kerosene, biomass, leading to deterioration of environment, economic productivity and quality of life, said Pradhan citing WHO. Fifteen lakh people die every year due to indoor air pollution in world, a third of these deaths happen in India, according to WHO.