The ministry of petroleum and natural gas has tied up with Unique Identification Authority of India to deliver Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinders by biometric identification.
"LPG will be delivered to a person by matching the fingerprints to ensure that the delivery is made to the
entitled person only, which will check the misuse of cylinders," said said Murli Deora, minister of petroleum and natural gas on Friday.
The pilot project has been started in 7 districts of Andhra Pradesh, Pune and Ludhiana. Under the project, the deliveryman will have device, which will match the fingerprints of the customers before the delivery.
The ministry is aiming to take LPG supply to 75% of the population of the country by the year 2015, taking customer base to 16 crore. Currently around 12.2 crore households have connections which accounts for 55% of the population.
"The focus is on extending LPG use predominantly in rural, north east and underserved areas," said Deora.
LPG is currently a deficit product and is being partly imported from abroad demand as its demand is growing more than supply. Indigenous availability of LPG has gone up from 7.6 million tones in 2005-06 to 10.2 million tones in 2010-11, while the demand is projected to reach 13.96 million tones in current financial year.