KOCHI: The modified Direct Benefit Transfer of LPG (DBTL) scheme will roll out in Kerala on Saturday. Kerala will become the first state in the country to start the scheme in all 14 districts.
Under the modified scheme, Aadhaar card is not mandatory to avail of the subsidy but they need to provide bank account details to LPG distributors.
Customers will also get a three-month grace period and another three months parking period to link their LPG connection to Aadhaar number and bank account, said Murali Krishna, general manager, IOCL Kerala and state-level coordinator of oil marketing companies at a press conference here on Friday.
Those consumers who are not CTC compliant will get a three-month grace period during which they will receive the cylinders at subsidised rate.
After this, they will get an additional three months as parking period when they will have to purchase the cylinders at market rate.
Pan-India, the scheme will be re-launched in 54 districts covering 11 states in the first phase on Saturday.
It will cover 2.33 crore households and the scheme will be expanded to the rest of the country on January 1, 2015. Kerala has 75.2 lakh LPG consumers, 75 per cent of whom are Aadhaar seeded while 65.13 per cent have taken bank seeding. We hope that the rest will become Cash Transfer Compliant during the grace period allotted, he added.
“LPG consumers who join the scheme from November 15 onwards will get a one-time permanent advance of Rs 568 as soon as they book a cylinder.
“The subsidy amount will be credited within three days of the delivery of the cylinder. In Kerala, Wayanad district has 94 per cent of its LPG customers who have linked their Aadhaar cards to oil companies and banks.
“There are 1.46 lakh LPG consumers in the backward district, of which 1.38 lakh have already linked their Aadhaar cards with oil companies and banks. Thiruvananthapuram has only 60 per cent of consumers who are Cash Transfer Compliant (CTC), while Idukki district, which has lot of migrant population, has only 53 per cent consumers who are Cash Transfer compliant,” said T Satish Kumar, Deputy General Manager-LPG Sales, Indian Oil Corporation.
Consumers who had joined the scheme earlier and had received cash subsidy in their bank accounts need not do anything further.
They should check their Cash Transfer Complaint status on www.MyLPG.In.
Satish Kumar added that about 9,000 customers in the country, including 700 from Kerala, have opted out of the subsidy scheme, thus saving Rs 5.31 crore by way of subsidies to the government.