Free LPG plan fuels war of words between oil ministry, Karnataka govt

NEW DELHI: Cooking gas appears to be fuelling the ongoing political fight between the BJP and Congress in Karnataka ahead of the assembly polls, expected in April or May.

The oil ministry has locked horns with the Siddaramaiah government over the state's own scheme for providing free LPG connection to poor households, much on the lines of the Centre's Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) programme.

On Tuesday, the ministry issued a statement to trash the state government's claim that the Mukhya Mantri Anila Bhagya Yojane (MMABY) is being implemented in collaboration with the Centre. It said the state's scheme did not have the Centre's concurrence as it did not follow the established modalities for implementing the programme.

Latest government data shows more than 8.5 lakh poor households have received free LPG connections in Karnataka till date under the Ujjwala scheme since it was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 1, 2016 with an aim of covering 5 crore families by 2019. So far, over 3.35 crore poor families across the country have benefitted under the scheme. Encouraged by the rapid progress, the government has in this year's Budget raised the target to 8 crore families.

But the Karnataka government functionaries claimed the state's poor did not get "proper" benefit of PMUY and over two lakh families in the state have been selected for the Ujjwala scheme but are yet to get their connection. MMABY promises free connection to 15-20 lakh poor households.

Raising concerns over "large-scale chaos and implementation issues in the field," the ministry said the state government's move to unilaterally implement its scheme through the network of dealers violates the establish modalities for LPG programme.

It also charged the state government with reneging on commitment to follow such modalities, made at a meeting between the state's food and civil supplies minister and oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan. "Karnataka government earlier approached the ministry for approval of MMABY. This ministry advised the state government to implement MMABY as a complementary scheme of PMUY and asked the state to follow the procedure of implementing the scheme through OMCs (public sector oil marketing companies) only as is being done in case of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Assam, Punjab and Haryana," the ministry said.

According to the statement, the ministry had requested the state government to implement the scheme through OMCs only several times. But the Karnataka is unilaterally implementing MMABY directly through the network of distributors without involving the OMCs.