Budget to hike Ujjwala bar towards 100% household LPG coverage

TIL Desk/Business/New Delhi/ The Union Budget 2019-20 is likely to renew the focus on the NDA government’s flagship Ujjwala scheme with the aim of increasing access to cooking gas, or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), to all the country’s households before the year-end.

Official sources here said that as part of his Budget speech, the Finance Minister may first propose to complete the targeted 80 million connections under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) in first 100 days of the government.

So far, Ujjwala connections have reached the 71.9 million-mark. In addition, another 10-20 million new LPG connections would be given in the subsequent months to cover all poor households, as part of a cabinet decision taken late last year.

These measures are expected to increase access to cooking gas to 100 per cent of the country’s households from present level of about 93-94 per cent. With this, the mission of providing clean fuel to all households in the country would be completed, and the next phase would begin with the focus on ensuriung that all new connections, particularly by the poorer sections, take an LPG refill.

Under PMUY, gas connections are provided to below poverty line (BPL) families with a support of Rs 1,600 for each connection. The LPG connection is provided in the name of the female member of the family. The sources said that along with increasing the targeted connections in PMUY, the Budget may allocate an additional Rs 2,000-3,000 crore for the scheme to complete the coverage of 100 per cent households.