Households permitted to retain multiple cooking gas connections on the condition that they will be supplied refills at subsidised rate only for one (double bottle) of the connections will now get non-subsidised refills that cost less.
This follows a recent decision of the state-owned oil marketing companies to discontinue the separate refill rate for non-domestic exempted category customers. This separate refill rate also applied to such households in addition to the NDEC users that include government hospitals, school and college hostels, mid-day meal schemes, and recognised welfare institutions
The price of this refill was Rs. 1,265, whereas the non-subsidised domestic cylinder costs Rs. 936 each. The non-subsidised domestic cylinder was introduced after the government fixed a limit on the number of domestic cylinders for a household in a financial year. Once the household utilises the quota, which last month was increased from six to nine in the fiscal beginning from April, it would be supplied only non-subsidised domestic cylinders.
Following a government directive, the three companies — IOC, BPCL and HPCL — have announced that the NDEC customers would also be supplied non-subsidised domestic cylinders. This would mean that they would get the same (14.2 kg) refill at Rs. 330 less.
The same communication from the oil companies said domestic customers converted to NDEC because of non-submission of the KYC (know your customer) details would also be supplied the non-subsidised domestic refills.
In Tamil Nadu, there are an estimated 1.20 lakh multiple connections for Indane and the KYC requirements were met for one lakh such connections. The rest of the connections have been blocked.
A Bharat Gas official said of their 12 lakh connections in and around the city, 20,000 customers with multiple connections did not submit KYC. The company has blocked supplies to such connections.
