The safety net of having an additional LPG connection for that rainy day may not last long. The government plans to allow a household to have only a single LPG connection. A single connection that provides two cylinders, however, will not be touched.
The change would be brought in by amending the LPG (Regulation of Supply & Distribution) Order 2000, to reduce the multiplicity of connections in different consumers? names in the same household.
To ensure that consumers do not take advantage of connections across companies, all the three marketing PSUs?IOL (including IBP), Bharat Petroleum and HPCL?have already undertaken an exercise to reduce the number of multiple connections and are currently in the process of data reconciliation.
The Planning Commission?s proposal to have income-tax payers fork out Rs 480 for an LPG cylinder (against the existing subsidised price of Rs 295) and restrict the number of cylinders to eight a year for non-taxpayers has not found many takers within government. Instead of a sudden hike of Rs 180 a cylinder for PAN cardholders, the petroleum ministry has proposed a moderate increase for all users.
?The Planning Commission?s suggestion to limit the number of cylinders for non-income-tax paying consumers is not feasible. There will be implementation problems and, further, there are many non-income-tax paying consumers who may not have been covered in the tax net, though eligible,? said a note prepared by the petroleum ministry on targeting of subsidies on domestic LPG.
A senior oil company official said as of December 10, 2007, Indian Oil has already identified around 27.9 lakh consumers with multiple connections and has blocked 4.3 lakh such connections. Similarly, HPCL has identified 59.4 lakh consumers of which 1.02 lakh connections have been blocked. In the case of BPCL, of the 4.6 lakh consumers identified, around 3,000 connections stand blocked.
