Come November 1, domestic liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) customers of public sector oil marketing companies in six smart cities of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana will need to share a one-time password (OTP) while taking delivery of the refills.
Warangal and Karimnagar in Telangana and Visakhapatnam, Tirupati, Kakinada and Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh are the cities where the OTP-based delivery authentication code (DAC) to ensure the refill reaches the intended customer will be rolled out.
The six cities form part of 100 smart cities across the country where the oil companies are getting ready to launch the project next month.
Besides the smart cities, the project is likely to be extended to a few more cities, Hyderabad being one of them, sources in the companies said.
Hyderabad is not part of the list, but the project of customer authenticating refill deliveries is already under way in the city, said R.Sravan S.Rao, Executive Director and State Head of Indian Oil Corporation for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
The fundamental idea behind the OTP scheme is to reach the cylinder to the intended customer and push forward the digitisation process.
The DAC scheme will replace the existing process of the delivery boy getting the customer’s signature on the receipt while delivering the refill and submitting it later at the LPG distributor office. In the new scheme, an one-time password received on the registered mobile phone has to be shared by the customers at the time of taking delivery.
Sources in Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) said the emphasis of government is every LPG customer should be clearly identified. Thus, those using connection registered in someone else name will find it difficult with the new scheme.
Telangana LPG Distributor’s Association General Secretary K. Jagan Mohan Reddy said an official communication was yet awaited.
He said there are bound to be some teething issues, especially if the family has only one mobile phone and that is with someone who is at work elsewhere.
Mr.Rao said customers will not be inconvenienced and refill delivered if there are issues such as those pertaining to mobile connectivity.
In such cases, the delivery boy has to call the distributorship and ask them to exercise the override option that hitherto he did.
