New LPG norms leading to consumer harassment

New restrictions by government on supply of LPG cylinders has come with unusual hardships for aam people like Rishi Kumar, who are facing unfriendly dealers trying to make more money with each new connection. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Dec 26, 2012, 19:54:54 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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New restrictions by government on supply of LPG cylinders has come with unusual hardships for aam people like Rishi Kumar, who are facing unfriendly dealers trying to make more money with each new connection.

Kumar's visit to an Indian Oil dealer's office in north Delhi's Badli area in September for new connection resulted in denial of the service on the ground that he did not have a ration card. As per the Indian Oil website, ration card is one of many documents required to apply for a connection.

He then ran from pillar to post and found a cylinder delivery boy who assured to get him a connection. Two months later, he got a call from the boy seeking Rs 6,500 for the connection. The reason for the high cost was that apart from one cylinder, he would have to buy a gas-stove, a gas trolley and a regulator.

When asked, a person at the dealer, Kamla Karan gas agency, said buying everything is mandatory and new connections would be available only from January 10. As per the website, a new connection with single cylinder only should not cost more Rs 1,850.

A visit by this reporter to another gas dealer in north Delhi did not reflect a better picture. "Every time I come they ask for a new document to get a gas cylinder," said a daily-wager Ram Singh, who claimed to have visited the dealer thrice in the last one month. Another person claimed that the agency was refusing to accept the form saying the oil companies have not issued new connections.

The harassment is not confined to Delhi alone as the government has decided to limit the number of subsidized LPG cylinders in a year to six and transfer the subsidy directly into bank accounts of the beneficiary.

The Indian Oil - biggest LPG cylinder supplier in India - has decided to switch to direct cash transfer in 51 districts from February, thereby making the requirement of having a bank account compulsory to receive the subsidy amount. Delhi's two districts -north-east and north-west - would get covered. Other oil companies are expected to follow suit.

The Consumer Affair ministry's consumer helpline in the last two months have recorded maximum complaints against the LPG cylinder dealers for refusing to issue new connections. "For the last four months I am visiting my gas dealer to get a new connection but they refuse to accept my form on one pretext of another," said Manoj Shivshanker Chavan of Maharashtra, in his complaint to the consumer helpline.

Arun Punnapra, who shifted to Trivandrum few months back, got a LPG connection after paying an agent Rs 2,500 extra. His month long effort to get a connection from dealers of two different oil companies failed as they insisted on documents which were not required. "I was first asked ration card and then residential certificate from a municipal body and so on. The agent delivered the cylinder in a day, shockingly," he said, in his post on an RTI forum.

A petroleum ministry official, however, assured of looking into the complaints.

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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