Marking fifty percent completion of the targets of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Ujjwala Yojana, Minister of State (Independent Charge), Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday said that these are the days of prosperity for the Indian government and Indian women that such schemes are being announced.
Pradhan was speaking at an event which saw President Pranab Mukherjee distributing LPG connections to Below Poverty Line (BPL) beneficiaries in his former Lok Sabha Constituency Jangipur.
Pradhan, while addressing the audience, said that the yojana was started in Uttar Pradesh 14 months back on May 1, 2016, and was inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi.
"These are the days of honour for the government and for the poor women that such schemes are being launched in India," he said.
He further added that in India, every year five lakh women die because of lung problems caused due to smoke by traditional mode of creating fire.
"This is equivalent to smoking 400 cigarettes, which has been report by World Health Organization (WHO)," Pradhan said.
He added that to stop that shameful system, the government started this scheme.
"Since then there has been a 2.5 crore of collection in Jhangipur and till now Bengal and Uttar Pradesh have the highest connection," he said.
He said that three lakh new connections have also come up in different districts of West Bengal.
Abhijeet Mukherjee, Congress MP from Jangipur, was also present at the occasion. Abhijeet won the Jangipur constituency twice after his father became the president in 2012.
This programme was a part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mission to provide "clean fuel better life" to all the BPL families.
Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana is an ambitious social welfare scheme of Prime Minister Modi-led government launched on May 1, 2016 from Ballia in Uttar Pradesh.
Under this scheme, the government aims to provide LPG connections to BPL households in the country. The scheme is aimed at replacing the unclean cooking fuels mostly used in the rural India with the clean and more efficient LPG.
The government has set a target of five crore LPG connections to be distributed to the BPL households across the country under the scheme.
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