LPG subsidy in your bank soon

The direct benefit transfer – hailed by the government as a ‘game changer’ project – could soon touch your lives too. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 28, 2013, 23:53:53 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The direct benefit transfer – hailed by the government as a ‘game changer’ project – could soon touch your lives too.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will take a call on bringing LPG subsidies under the direct benefit transfer (DBT) framework next week, a move that is slated to be rolled out in 43 districts across the country including Delhi’s north-east and north-west districts.

The LPG consumers will have to pay market price of the cooking gas cylinders off-front and the government would later transfer subsidy directly into unique identification (UID) or Aadhaar linked bank accounts.

A sizeable number of consumers in these 43 districts have already provided their Aadhaar and bank account numbers to LPG dealers ensuring smooth roll-out, government officials said. The government intends to extend the regime to around 10 crore consumers in other districts as the decision is expected to push LPG consumers to enroll for Aadhaar.

Putting LPG on the DBT platform would leapfrog the UPA’s effort to extend the technology driven mechanism to other subsidies aimed at plugging leakages to cut the government’s annual subsidy bill by around Rs 70,000 crore.

An Aadhaar based cash transfer pilot in Mysore district of Karnataka has shown positive results, an official said.

Till now, only 26 non-subsidy schemes such as scholarships and pensions are on the DBT mode since January 1, when it was rolled out. Although the results are not as desired by the government, the officials say the UID payment bridge --- used to transfer the money --- has worked well.

The April 3 meeting is the first review of the DBT by the committee headed by PM Singh since its rollout 20 districts and would provide another fillip to the scheme.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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