Oil companies to keep a check on use of subsidised cylinders

Gas companies will be able to easily check the number of subsidised cylinders a household has availed due to ready data available to restrict use of such cylinders to six a year, as per the government decision.

"Since oil marketing companies have complete database of their customers, they will easily keep a check on the number of usage of the LPG cylinders in a year," an oil company official said here.

With the Centre restricting the supply of subsidised LPG cylinders, cooking gas consumers will get three LPG cylinders for the rest of current financial year.

"LPG users will get only three subsidised cylinders in the remaining fiscal year starting from today till March 31, 2013," an official of Indian Oil said here today.

"Whether a consumer has used only one LPG cylinder or 10 till yesterday, he will be eligible for three subsidised ones for rest of the 2012-13," he said.

The Centre had yesterday put a restriction on the usage of subsidised cylinders to six in a year and beyond this limit, consumers will have to pay market rate for getting the supply.

In Punjab, there are 59 lakh registered LPG connections against 54 lakh households while in Chandigarh, there are 3.80 lakh cooking gas connections against 2.35 lakh households. Meanwhile, oil marketing companies under the nationwide 'One Household and One LPG Connection' have been asking customers to surrender their extra or multiple connections.

Customers have been given time till September 15 for surrendering their extra connections, otherwise erring consumers will be liable to face permanent disconnection and penal action under the Essential Commodities Act, the official said.

In Punjab and Chandigarh, oil companies have already blocked about 5 lakh and 1.08 lakh connections, respectively, which were multiple ones at the same address and not refilled for the last six months or more.

"We are blocking the LPG connections wherever we find multiple ones," the official added.