Govt will cut your second cooking gas connection

Restriction applies to piped gas too

NEW DELHI: The next time your neighbour boasts about having more than one cooking gas connection, don’t envy her. The government is planning to suspend multiple connections and restrict it to one connection per family.

The ministry of petroleum and natural gas is planning to amend the LPG (Regulation and Supply) Order that will reword the guidelines for issuing connections from “one connection per person” to “one connection per family”. The amendment has been finalised and is awaiting the approval of the minister of petroleum and natural gas, Murli Deora.

The one connection per family will apply even to piped natural gas (PNG) marketed by Mahanagar Gas Ltd (MGL) in Mumbai and Indraprastha Gas Ltd in Delhi. If you get piped gas, you have to surrender your cylinders.

If your family and your son’s family have the same address but two gas connections, one connection will be at risk. “The government will leave it to the discretion of the oil marketing companies to take a decision in such cases,” says an official.

The politically tricky decision to restrict gas connections to one per family is being taken with a view to bringing down the government’s cooking gas subsidy burden, which is currently Rs189.14 per cylinder.  

The annual subsidy burden exceeds Rs 11,000 crore. "Besides, there is a huge problem of diversion of domestic cooking gas cylinders for non-cooking purposes and for commercial use," says the official.

Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum have - the main suppliers of cooking gas in cylinders - have already started matching their data on gas connections to identify multiple connections at the same address. A pilot exercise in Jaipur found that three out of 10 households have multiple connections. Indian Oil's director (marketing), GC Daga, confirmed that an exercise was on to identify multiple connection households all over the country. Indian Oil has 4.67 crore LPG connections accounting for nearly 50% of the total 10 crore connections in the country.

Asked whether the changes proposed would be harsh on joint families since dealers in some places do not allow more than one refill in 21 days, officials in the ministry of petroleum and natural gas said no dealer could refuse a refill even if it was sought before the expiry of 21 days from the previous order. "However, we have informally placed restrictions on dealers so that they do not indent cylinders in the name of genuine customers and sell them in the black market," says a senior oil company executive.