Only 0.006% ready to
give up LPG subsidy
NEW DELHI: An early
call of the Narendra Modi government, urging people to voluntarily give up
subsidies on cooking gas cylinders has signed up just 0.006% of the customer
base of 15 crore connections.
In three months since
the government exhorted people to give up subsidies on their gas cylinders,
just 8,868 people or entities have opted to voluntarily part with subsidies, an
embarrassing civic consciousness statistic in a country that takes pride in its
ever expanding list of millionaires.
And, hardly any
of them are occupants of bungalows in Lutyen's Delhi or Mumbai's plush Cuff
Parade areas. There are many expatriates, embassies, schools and people from
lesser known parts of the country including Begusarai, Cuttack, Guntur,
Bhavnagar, Ladakh and Durg, who have chosen to pay the market price for cooking
gas, government officials and company executives said.
The numbers are
depressing for a country where the number of crorepatis is 42,800 according to
official estimates, while tax consultants say the number would be
at least 10 times more. "It is quite surprising that the rich, who reside
in posh localities of big cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Pune
and Chennai, have not yet volunteered. This subsidy of less than Rs 5,000 per
annum is nothing but peanuts for them," a person with direct knowledge of
the matter said requesting anonymity.
Some government
officials defended them. Many posh localities in New Delhi and Mumbai get
supply of non-subsidised piped natural gas, hence names
of ministers and industrialists are not shown on the list of people who have
surrendered their subsidy claims, officials said.
"It is quite
possible that this amount is so small for them that they have not reflected on
this matter. But, like Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, this is also an important
nation-building exercise. We must involve them because they don't need this
money, which is meant for the poor only," one official said.Oil Minister Dharmendra
Pradhan plans to launch an aggressive campaign to persuade about one crore
people to give up subsidy, officials said. This will save about Rs3,500 crore
in the annual LPG subsidy bill, they said. The oil ministry had first appealed
to executives of oil companies to voluntarily give up LPG subsidy through a
specially created portal in July this year. In August, Indian Oil Corp, Bharat
Petroleum Corp and Hindustan Petroleum Corp directly sent text messages to
millions of customers to surrender their subsidy claims in the name of
nation building.
According to data
provided by some gas agencies, government and private schools and embassies in
New Delhi have taken a lead in giving up subsidy, which will save about Rs4-5
crore in subsidy bill annually. These schools in Delhi included Shiv Mandir,
Tagore International School, Guru Harikrishan Public School and DTEA Higher
Secondary School. Names of the embassies of Qatar, Czech Republic, Israel,
Eritrea, Tajikistan and Croatia could be identified on the list of givers.
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