Union Cabinet Approves Rs 100 Hike in PM Ujjwala Yojana Gas Subsidy

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a hike of Rs 100 in cooking gas subsidy under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY). The scheme currently provides poor households a targeted subsidy of Rs 200 per cylinder of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) . The PMUY beneficiaries will now get a subsidy of Rs 300 per LPG cylinder on market price.

 

As a result, PMUY beneficiaries in Delhi will now pay Rs 603 for every 14.2-kg LPG cylinder against the market price of Rs 903.

The latest decision comes on the back of a series of steps taken by the Centre over the past one month to reduce the cost of LPG cylinder ahead of crucial state and general elections.

On September 13, the Centre had announced the extension of the PMUY scheme by three years till 2025-26 to disburse 7.5 million new LPG connections at a cost of Rs 1,650 crore.

Under the PMUY, a deposit free LPG connection is provided to adult women from poor households. The beneficiaries are identified either from the Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) list or from seven other identified categories such as households from Scheduled Caste (SCs), Scheduled Tribe (STs), Most Backward Classes (MBC), beneficiaries of PM Awas Yojana (Gramin), beneficiaries of Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY), etc.

 

With 103 million connections under the PMUY, the beneficiaries make up almost a third of the 314 million households in India with a LPG connection.

On August 29, the Centre had cut the price of a 14.2 kg domestic LPG cylinder by Rs 200 across all markets. In Delhi, for instance, the decision brought down the cost of a 14.2 kg cylinder to Rs 903 per cylinder.

 

The LPG price was last raised in March by Rs 50. Before this, the price was raised in July 2022.

Millions getting subsidy

 

The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has said that the pending PMUY applications had been cleared to provide deposit-free LPG connection to all eligible households.

The PMUY was announced in May 2016 as a flagship scheme with an objective to make clean cooking fuel, such as LPG, available to rural and deprived households, which were otherwise using traditional cooking fuels such as firewood, coal, cow-dung cakes, etc.

It initially covered 90 million beneficiaries for up to 12 refills for 2022-23. The subsidy was extended by a year in March at a total cost of Rs 7,680 crore.

Data from the Petroleum Planning & Analysis Cell shows that overall LPG penetration was 99.9 per cent in 2022, mainly owing to the PMUY scheme. In 2022, about 90 per cent of the LPG was consumed by household users, 8 per cent by industrial users, and 2 per cent by vehicles.

 

In 2022-23, oil marketing companies (OMCs) sold nearly 29.34 million million tonnes of LPG, of which about 86.5 per cent was sold to the domestic sector.

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 2.4 billion people worldwide (which is about one-third of the global population) rely on open fires or inefficient stoves fuelled by kerosene, biomass (such as wood, animal dung, and crop waste), and coal for cooking.

 

This contributed to an estimated 3.2 million deaths in 2020, with over 237,000 deaths of children under the age of 5.