Even as the Centre announced that the rollout of direct transfer of the cash subsidy on LPG would be from June 1, only 55 per cent of consumers got their Aadhaar number linked to the database of oil companies in the five districts in Andhra Pradesh.
Even poorer is the linkage of Aadhaar numbers to the bank accounts of consumers which is crucial for the transfer of subsidy amount.
The deadline for the LPG consumers in the five districts of Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy Chittoor, Anantapur and East Godavari to get their Aadhaar number linked to the database of oil companies and bank accounts ended on May 15.
With the Centre announcing the rollout, the LPG consumers who have not yet linked their Aadhaar numbers to bank accounts should necessarily do so by May 31 to avail the transfer of subsidy from June 1.
In Hyderabad, there are a total of 12 lakh LPG consumers, of which 5.8 lakh have linked with Aadhaar and of these, only 3 lakh were linked with banks. The break-up for the other districts are: Ranga Reddy - 13.59 lakh, 6.11 lakh and 2.03 lakh resepctively, Chittoor - 6.67 lakh, 4.2 lakh and 3 lakh , East Godavari - 9 lakh, 6 lakh and 3 lakh and Anantapur - 5 lakh consumers, 3 lakh and 20,000.
The objective of Direct Benefit Transfer on LPG is to check bogus cards, ghost consumers and misuse of domestic LPG cylinders for commercial purpose, said P.V. Ramesh, Principal Secretary, Finance and Nodal Officer, Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme.
Only 55 per cent of about 46 lakh consumers seeded their Aadhaar number to the database of oil companies so far, he said. “However, we do not have the total number of Aadhaar-bank account linkage,” he added.
Dr. Ramesh said the consumers should approach the banks and get their Aadhaar number linked to the bank accounts as early as possible. To expedite the process, the Department of Financial Services directed the banks to complete the seeding within two days of submission of the Aadhaar number. The consumer would get SMS alert soon after the linkage was done. He said those who did not enrol for the Aadhaar number would also get LPG cylinders at the subsidised price till August 31. They would have to get their number and link it to their bank accounts and oil company database before that deadline. Official sources estimate that at least 20 per cent LPG connections will be bogus and thus will not be seeded to the oil company database.
