Brace up to get only four cooking gas cylinders in a year at the present subsidised rate and get additional refills at the non-subsidised rate to be fixed every month. If you are a conscientious citizen, you can volunteer to forsake the subsidised refills altogether.
DMK representative MK Alagiri is likely to skip it as a protest.
The policy of the dual pricing mechanism of LPG for domestic cooking is on the agenda of the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) headed by
finance minister Pranab Mukherjee for a decision on Friday. EGoMs have full authority to take decisions on behalf of the government, without routing them to the union cabinet.
The new policy will save the government Rs 12,629 crores a year in terms of high subsidy it shares with the oil companies. The figure of four refills a year is based on the pattern of consumption of gas by the BPL (below poverty line) families. The current subsidy on domestic LPG in Delhi is Rs 275 per cylinder and it is around that figure across India.
The decision is most likely on Friday, but for the possibility of Chemicals Minister M K Alagiri of the DMK boycotting the EGoM meeting on the ground that it would adversely hit his party in the upcoming civic elections in Tamil Nadu on October 23. The DMK has already declared not to have any alliance with the Congress in these elections.
Other members of the EGoM are petroleum minister Jaipal Reddy, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, road transport and highways minister C P Joshi and railway minister Dinesh Trivedi of Trinamul Congress. Trivedi's stand is also not known as he would go by the diktat of his party chief and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
The agenda document seeks the EGoM approval on five issues concerning the Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) supply for cooking:
-- Maximum number of subsidised refills to a customer to be limited to four in one year.
-- Creation of two categories of customers as per entitlement for subsidised and non-subsidezed refills.
-- Customers willing to forsake the four subsidised refills will be encouraged to do so voluntarily as a first step.
-- Introduction of a non-subsidised rate for domestic LPG, in addition to the existing subsidised rate, and it will be subject to change on a monthly basis.
-- Any increase in the distributor's commission on account of higher working capital due to dual rates of LPG to be passed in the retail selling price of the LPG to the customer. A decision may be taken as to whether non-subsidised domestic LPG be exempted from levy of customs and excise duty.
A lengthy note circulated to the EGoM members says the scheme proposed would be the easiest to implement and monitor as the entire customer record is computerised and so the change can be administered without any additional inputs from the field.
It says: "The figure of four refills is in consonance with the pattern of LPG refills consumed by BPL families and consistent with the
recommendation of limiting subsidy to BPL households only.
"This will reduce the burden of subsidy by Rs 12,629 crores at the average rate of subsidy for the year 2010-11 and with the expansion of customer base, it will have an incremental impact."
The number of domestic LPG connections has grown significantly with 4.82 crore connections added between March 2004 and March 2011.
The government has been fixing a quota of every subsidised item it provides through the public distribution system (PDS) and also deciding who are the beneficiaries eligible for such items, but that were not so in case of the LPG supplied for domestic cooking at the universal subsidy without any quota, the note points out.
Noting that the issues relating to rationalisation of kerosene and LPG distribution have been discussed at various levels, including the study reports on pricing demand system and supply of petroleum products conducted from time to time, the note says: "This proposal is aimed at rationalising the distribution of LPG by introducing a ceiling on the number of subsidised gas cylinders."
