BHUBANESWAR: Even as the Central government is under fire over rise in price of cooking gas, it has come to fore that 50.32 lakh beneficiaries of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) from Odisha have availed refills from April 1, 2020 to December 1 this year.
Odisha has 56.68 lakh beneficiaries who were given LPG connections under PMUY. While 47.5 lakh BPL families received the connections in phase-I, an additional 6.35 lakh connections were given the same from March 2020 to October this year.
This was informed by Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Rameswar Teli on Monday in a written reply to BJD MP Amar Patnaik on the sustainability of the Central scheme. The Minister said 84 per cent of Ujjwala beneficiaries have taken refills across the country. The percentage of refills in Odisha will be more than the national average if the total number of refills and the total number of connections are taken into account.
Teli said the average consumption of PMUY beneficiaries during the financial year 2019-20 was three refills of 14.2 kg and it went up to 4.39 refills during 2020-21. The Minister said from March 2020 to October this year, 6,35,666 connections have been released under the scheme.
The government has taken several steps to encourage better consumption of LPG by PMUY beneficiaries which include deferment of loan recovery from subsidy amount, swap option from 14.2 kg to 5 kg to reduce upfront cash outgo and option of 5 kg double bottle connection.