New Delhi: Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas said that under the PAHAL (Pratyaksh Hastantrit Labh Yojana) scheme, it has managed to block 3.34 crore duplicate/ fake/ inactive domestic LPG connections. This has helped the government save Rs 21,261 crore in FY15 – FY16.
The Ministry said “MoPNG assumed that the inactive or blocked consumers, who were not eligible for subsidy would have availed the entire quota of 12 cylinders against the national average per capita consumption of 6.27 cylinders in 2014-15. Considering the national average off take of 6.27 cylinders (as used by OMCs in their estimation), the estimated savings in subsidy for the year 2015-16 would be Rs 4,813 crore only.”
The Ministry claimed that the total consumption of cooking gas in any given year was a combination of the number of connections at the beginning of the year, bogus connections eliminated during the year through the process of DBT under PAHAL, new connections issued to genuine consumers during the year, and normal fluctuations in individual consumption. If the DBT had not been implemented, the outgo on the subsidy would have been higher by Rs. 14,818 crore in 2014-15 and Rs. 6,443 crore in 2015-16.