E-Paper
Oil firms block over 40k LPG connections
Multiple connections on the same name, address face disconnection
Around 40,000 LPG connections in the city have been blocked by oil marketing companies of people having more than one connection on same name or address. This exercise is being carried out after LPG rationing came into force in September.
All the three state-owned oil marketing companies (OMCs) - Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited - are implementing the policy of ‘One household, one connection’ and have asked their consumers to voluntarily give up additional connections. The companies have started identifying consumers’ addresses with multiple connections within and across companies. They have asked the domestic LPG distributors to collect and verify duly filled Know Your Customer (KYC) forms from the consumers by November 15.
Multiple connections on the same name and address face disconnection, while in case of multiple connections at the same address under different names, distributors have been asked to collect KYC forms to verify genuine users.
These connections will remain blocked until all the multiple connections are surrendered. The customer will have to approach the distributor, fill up the KYC form with latest identity and address proof documents to justify the extra connection, reactivate the genuine connection and surrender the ones that have been taken illegally.
Though all the LPG consumers have been asked to submit their multiple gas connections before November 15, officials of the three oil companies in Bhopal told HT that the response had been poor. They said only a few hundred consumers have surrendered their multiple connections on their own till now.
To weed out multiple connections, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry recently extended the deadline for filling up the KYC forms by LPG consumers to November 15 to identify the genuine connections. There are somewhere between 3 to 4 lakh LPG connections in Bhopal. Everyday, 9,000 to 10,000 LPG cylinders are refilled in the city.
PK Katkar, area manager of Indane Bhopal, told HT, that Indane has the maximum market share of LPG connections, over 2 lakh in Bhopal.
“Around 35,000 connections have been blocked. These consumers will have to fill KYC forms, following which their respective gas dealers will go for the physical verification of their claims and decide whether they have genuine connections or they have to surrender their extra connections,” he said.
Rakesh Maheshwari, senior sales manager of Hindustan Petroleum, Bhopal, maintained that the response to the surrender was poor. “Our company has already blocked over 4,000 connections. But people are not coming forward to surrender their extra connections. Let us see by November 15, how many surrender here,” he said.
Ajit Singh Sengar, area manager Bharat Gas, Bhopal, said, “As we have only five main distributors in Bhopal, around 1,500 connections were blocked. But once the companies start collating their data of connections with each other, more multiple connections will be blocked,” he said.
