Kalyani: Indian Oil Corporation Limited has set an ambitious target of providing free LPG connections to 7,364 villages in Bengal by August 15.
Around 5 lakh families in these villages will be covered under this scheme that has been christened as Gram Swaraj Abhiyan.
"We have already identified these villages. In a month, that is from July 15 to August 15, deposit free LPG connections will be provided to 5 lakh families in these villages," said Abhijit Dey, General Manager (LPG), IOCL at a media event at Kalyani Bottling Plant of IOCL on Thursday.
IOCL has already given connections under Pradhan Mantri Ujala Yojana to 53.86 lakh customers in Bengal and by March 2019, it aims to provide 20 lakh more connections.
"In 2014, 50 percent households in the state had LPG connection. Now, it has gone up to 86 percent. Our target is to provide LPG connections to 98 percent of the people in Bengal in the next few years," he added.
It may be mentioned that in a bid to cater to more number of customers, IOCL is increasing the capacity of all its existing bottling plants. "We are augmenting capacity of the Kalyani bottling plant from 180 MT to 300 MT. This will enable us to despatch 1 lakh LPG cylinders a day from the present the capacity of 60,000. The investment stands at Rs 50 crore," Shikharan Dakua, Chief Plant Manager, Kalyani said.
IOCL has already enhanced the capacities of three of its plants located in Durgapur, Malda and Raninagar. It is also increasing the capacity of its Budge Budge and
Haldia plant.
IOCL will come up with another bottling plant in Kharagpur in the next three years. It may be mentioned that IOCL provides LPG connections to entire North Kolkata, North 24-Parganas, parts of South Kolkata, South 24-Parganas, Nadia, Hooghly and Murshidabad.