The annual cap on subsidised liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders will be raised from nine to 12 for a household, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas M. Veerappa Moily reiterated here on Saturday.
“The Cabinet will soon approve the proposal,” the Minister said, a day after Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi demanded a hike on the annual ceiling, in his speech at the AICC meet in New Delhi.
As much as a third of the 15 crore LPG consumers were “illegal beneficiaries”, with only 10 crore consumers identified as authorised, Mr. Moily said. He was speaking to presspersons after inaugurating an annual camp of the ‘Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access to Legal Education (IDIA) project’. IDIA, an initiative of a large group of law students and scholars, aims to increase access to legal education among marginalised groups and sensitise them to law as a career option.
Diversity, inclusivityVery few lawyers deal with matters of diversity and inclusivity in the country, and lawyers from the backward communities were “severely underrepresented” within the legal fraternity, Mr. Moily said. “There is plenty of excellence among disempowered sections of society, but they are losing out from the lack of opportunities.”
He added that the lack of adequate representation of the marginalised communities means that important causes remain unaddressed. “Whether it is about the cause of women or backward communities, cases often fail in the Supreme Court because we don’t have competent lawyers.” It was not just political inclusiveness that needs to be sought, “there are millions of freedoms that have to be won, including social and economic,” he added.
Advocate-General of Karnataka Ravivarma Kumar and Vice-Chancellor of the National Law School of India University R. Venkata Rao spoke.
