With the oil marketing companies turning the heat on consumers having multiple domestic cooking gas connections, thousands of households in the city are discovering that refill cylinders cannot be booked unless they surrender the extra connections. “Refill supplies to all such connections have been stopped,” an Indane official says. This is the just one component of the exercise presumably aimed at equitable distribution of the 14.2 kg cylinders, each of which carry a subsidy of around Rs.340. Multiple connections under the ‘same name, same address’ category had been taken up now. If more than one connection, exists in the name of an individual at the same address, none are eligible for refills.
Customers who choose to retain a single cylinder connection will get to upgrade it to a double bottle connection, the official explains.
Since the entire customer database is now online and can be accessed on a real time basis, the companies generated a list of such connections and blocked them. Letters have been sent asking the customers to contact their distributors. The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas’s ‘one household, one LPG connection’ campaign says it is illegal for a household to hold more than one connection.
“The oil marketing companies (IOC, BPC and HPC) are identifying consumers/households addresses with multiple connections within and across companies. These connections will be blocked till all multiple connections are surrendered.The customers would have to approach the distributor with his/her latest proof of identity and proof of address documents and any other documents prescribed. They have to submit the Know Your Customer (KYC) form for reactivation of one domestic connection,” according to the campaign.
The next phase pertains to the ‘different name, same address’ category. “We have started issuing letters, which include connections in the name of husband, wife or any other family member in the same address,” says a Bharat Gas official.
This part is bound to pose problems. Many houses have several portions in which different families reside. As the address is the same in most of these connections, customers are bound to be irritated when asked to explain their position. Agreeing that “there is some work to do and some struggle too,” the BPC official says the KYC details are similar to those sought by banks.
The companies are expected to shortly launch the next stage of the exercise to identify customers who hold connections of more than one company. If any multiple connections are detected after September 15, all connections would be liable for permanent disconnection and penal action under Essential Commodities Act, the campaign warns.
Keywords: LPG connections
In response to Mr. Chandrasekharan's response earlier, some
clarification is in order.
The move to clean up multiple connections is laudable since the
multiple connections means abuse of subsidies for all cylinder refills
used. In order to keep the subsidy to the minimum, 4 refills are
allowed. In case of 2 connections, there is an extra subsidy for 4 more
refills and so on. Some understanding of the subsidy mechanism for LPG
is required here.
As for the diesel issue, there is no harm in buying diesel generators
because they are not subsidised. It is diesel which is subsidised and
there has been a study done to see the effect of price increase of
diesel on inflation. The study has given the indication that the
removal of subsidies on diesel by doing monthly increases for a year
would increase inflation by 1.5% or so. The government is expected to
announce the first price increase on diesel shortly (after monsoon
session). The % of diesel consumption due to cars/SUVs is small btw.
The government has got lopsided policies and this is one of them.
Nobody wastes gas so why this move? - all to appear to be helping the
poor and gain votes?
If you look at how diesel is being misused you will understand the
"support-the-rich" policy actually adopted by the state and central governments. Who owns diesel generators for private use? - the rich.
Who owns suvs and other large cars run on diesel? - the rich. Why 20-
30 diesel vehicles follow politicians in the motorcades? - the ones in
power. What stops the government from stopping production of diesel cars and regulating the sale of gensets for private use? Nobody wants to explain
this.
The diesel thus saved could be used for food transport, irrigation,
rural power production etc. The middle class and the poor are given a
bum deal in every which way in my Mahan Bharat.
This is good move, but as you will observe that there are lot of flats in the same plot constructed and people live over there, but address remain same. These things to be verified properly. Second thing, can any oil compnay clarify whether a person wants to have a private connection from other than the IOCL, BPCL OR HPCL is allowed or not.
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