May 3: Around 95 lakh people are set to lose their multiple LPG connections.
This follows a parliamentary panel’s directive to oil marketing firms to implement new LPG rules stringently to reduce the waiting list for new connections.
According to a last year’s amendment in the Liquefied Petroleum Gas Order, a single household can have only one LPG connection. Ear-lier, it was allowed to have more than one connection.
In its directive, the Parlia-mentary standing committee on petroleum and natural gas said that the disconnection of the multiple-connections will help the government to reduce the huge waiting list for the LPG connections in the country. There are 11.22 crore LPG connections in the country. Till now, the oil firms have disconnected 15 lakh such connections.
Despite issuing 60 lakh new gas connections in 2009, people seeking new connections have to face a waiting list of two lakh.
In order to reduce the waiting list, the oil firms have been aggressively buying new gas cylinders.
For 2010-11, Indian Oil is planning to buy 1.05 crore LPG cylinders and Hindustan Petroleum will buy 35 lakh cylinders.The committee noted that despite oil firms asking their distributors to deliver refilled LPG cylinder within 48 hours of booking, the delivery takes much longer time. “We desire the oil firms to see that these instructions are followed by distributors,” the panel said.