Panaji: Demanding to know the status of the free cylinder scheme announced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government during the 2022 Goa assembly elections, the Goa Forward Party (GFP) exhibited government documents showing that the scheme had been scrapped even before the BJP government could complete a year.

GFP vice-president Ashma along with the party leader and Margao councillor Nimisha Faleiro addressed a press conference at the city party headquarters and stated that the BJP released its manifesto called Sankalp Patra on February 8, 2022.

“The first promise in the manifesto was to provide three free cylinders to every household in Goa to alleviate the burden on the homemakers of the state,” they recalled, maintaining that since there was no related news for more than 6 months, Goa Forward Party applied for information about the scheme under the RTI Act.

The RTI reply revealed that the file was put up under the Rural Development Agency on June 14, 2022 as per the budget speech of the Chief Minister, and the file was put up before the Chief Minister in June 2022.

“It took four months for the Chief Minister to approve the file after which it was passed to the finance department. The file notings show that the Additional Secretary, finance department, noted that the government had proposed this scheme during the Ukraine war when the fuel price had skyrocketed and was further expected to go higher. However, the situation has recovered drastically and that the crude price had decreased from $120 to $80,” said Ashma.

Ashma concluded from the notings that the BJP government never wanted to implement the scheme adding, “Women are soft targets and the BJP wanted to use this promise to target women and take their votes; now we want to ask the Chief Minister to clarify whether he intends to implement this scheme and give free cylinders to the women in Goa.”

Ashma said that people are still waiting for the scheme and hence we want to make the people aware that they have been cheated by the BJP.