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Centre to provide 1.5 cr gas connection to BPL families

The Centre will provide 1.5 crore gas connections to women members of Below Poverty Line (BPL) families this fiscal, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said.

“We will provide 1.5 crore gas connections to women members of BPL families in fiscal 2016-17 and our target is to provide gas connections to five crore women in the next three years,” Pradhan said on Wednesday. 

He added: “It is a new initiative of our government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to provide cooking gas to women members of BPL families with state support.”

“After the Prime Minister requested people to give up gas subsidy, 96 lakh people have surrendered it and this amount is being used to give LPG connections to women in BPL families,” he added.

The Minister further said: “The government has set aside Rs 2,000 crore in the Union Budget 2016 to meet the initial cost of providing these LPG connections.”

He said the scheme would free women in rural areas from the curse of smoke while cooking and also reduce the time spent in the work. The scheme, ‘Ujjwala’, provides a financial support of Rs 1,600 for each LPG connection to BPL households.

The identification of eligible BPL families, as proposed in the Budget, will be made in consultation with the state.

Terming the Budget announcement as historic, Pradhan said the scheme would not only have immense health benefits for women and their children by providing a clean cooking fuel, but also provide significant ecological dividends.

Quoting the World Heath Organisation estimates, Pradhan said, “About 5 lakh women die in the country due to unclean cooking fuels. Most of these premature deaths are due to non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer.”

“While providing the new connections to BPL households, priorities would be given to the uncovered states and pockets, particularly in the eastern region of the country. This will benefit about 1.50 crore lakh households below the poverty line in 2016-17,” Pradhan added. 

The Minister said “as part of India’s drive towards self-sufficiency”, the Centre is considering to incentivise gas production from deep-water, ultra deep-water and high pressure-high temperature areas, which are presently not exploited on account of higher cost and higher risks.

“It is the desire of the PM to reduce the import of crude oil by 10 per cent by 2022 when country will be celebrating its 75th independence day on August 15 2022,” he added.
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