51.8 lakh family card holders don’t have LPG connection in TN; EPS tells Centre to revise kerosene allocation

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Tuesday said that 51.8 lakh family card holders in the state do not have LPG connection and 74.92 lakh card holders have single LPG connection, requesting the Centre to revise the kerosene allocation to the state under public distribution system.
He made the request in similar letters to Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman (Finance) Dharmendra Pradhan (Petroleum and Natural Gas) and Ram Vilas Paswan (Food and Public Distribution. Food minister R Kamaraj handed over the letters to Union ministers in person. “The state government has been continuously pressing for kerosene allotment, commensurate with the zero-cylinder cards which has still not been heeded by the Centre. In this circumstance, further reduction of PDS kerosene will drastically affect the cooking and lighting needs of the poor and will be detrimental to them,” the CM said.
The urgency stems from the fact that monthly allocation of kerosene till June was 16148KL, which is much lesser than the restricted requirement of 23035KL. From July, the monthly allocation has been communicated as 10764KL, a further reduction of 33.34% of the previous month’s allocation.
The chief minister said there was a lot of hue and cry from the cardholders, demanding that their actual entitlement of 10 litres of PDS kerosene every month. “The state is struggling to make ends meet with the limited allotment of 16148KL provided until June 2019. While so, this reset reduction would lead to great difficulty in the distribution at the field level leaving in lurch the poor and needy from remote areas and will put them into a lot of hardships,” Palaniswami said.
As a policy decision, the Centre does not provide kerosene to LPG connection holder. However, Tamil Nadu has been requesting allocation only for those families who do not have LPG connection and for those families having single LPG connection. At present, Centre provides restricted supply of three litres and one litre per month respectively.