BENGALURU: Consumers who have not been receiving LPG subsidies have more bad news in store. According to sources, a recent circular issued to LPG distributors said that any account not receiving subsidies will be ‘blocked’, or will be considered to have surrendered its subsidy by default.Also, the government is considering foregoing the Direct Benefit Transfer of LPG subsidies, and starting supply of LPG cylinders at a subsidised rate again. Meanwhile, officials of various departments implementing the scheme are shifting blame on other agencies.
Experts, however, argue that the fiasco could have been avoided if the subsidy transfer was not based on a faulty mechanism such as the linking of Aadhaar to bank and LPG accounts. ONGC sources say that the random de-linking of Aadhaar numbers from LPG accounts by some banks after the recent
Aadhaar ruling by the Supreme Court could have aggravated the issue of non-transfer of subsidies.
Speaking to The New Indian Express, Vinod Akkal, deputy general manager of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, said that consumers’ accounts will be ‘blocked’ for beneficiaries who do not submit the ‘Know Your Consumer’ (KYC) documents by December 31.
Responding to a question, he said that all subsidy transfers were ‘technically controlled’ and any mistakes in the system were associated with and could be rectified by the concerned distributors. He said that the company has not received a single complaint over the issue till date.KS Karunakara, deputy general manager of Syndicate Bank — the leading bank in Karnataka — to a question regarding the complaints, said that such issues were sorted out by LPG distributors. “If there is a common reason due to which these beneficiaries are not receiving subsidies, then banks will take it up,” he said.
When contacted, MV Savithri, commissioner, Department of Food and Civil Supplies, said that such problems may have surfaced due to account data errors.Cyber-security expert V Anand said that the problem may have risen due to a flaw in the subsidy transfer system, wherein subsidies were transferred to the last seeded Aadhaar account. “This provides scope for wrong-doing as noticed in the Airtel Payments Bank scam and others,” he said. Moreover, oil companies had also insisted on updating KYC norms every two years, since biometric updation using Aadhaar was accurate. This might be the reason behind the problem, he said.
Sources in ONGC said that after the Aadhaar judgement by the Supreme Court, some of the banks delinked Aadhaar details from bank accounts. “LPG consumers who were getting subsidies through Aadhaar-enabled payment bridges, operated by NPCI, got affected,” the source said, adding that if there is failure in the transfer, accumulated subsidy will be transferred once the account gets linked.Sources in the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) denied any hand in the issue, saying that the problem was between the consumer and subsidy provider.