Petroleum Minister says households with LPG connections rose by 6 crore since 2014

New Delhi: Labourers transport gas cylinders during the International Labour Day, in New Delhi on Friday.PTI Photo by (PTI5_1_2015_000035B)

The NDA government has provided 6 crore households with LPG gas connections in the last 2.5 years, the minister for Petroleum said.

"In 2014 the number of households with gas connections was 14 crore and it stands at 20 crore now, Dharmendra Pradhan, the Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas said at the Global Natural Resources Conclave. India has a total of 26 crore households.

The NDA government's Ujjwala scheme aims to provide rural families access to clean cooking gas fuel. The government provided for an outlay of Rs. 8,000 crore as an initial outlay for the scheme. The government also sought to defray the cost by persuading middle class and rich families with access to subsidized gas cylinders to give up the subsidy under another scheme called 'Give it Up'.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often alluded to the biomass-fired chulas used by rural women to cook in his election rallies, particularly in Uttar Pradesh. He likened cooking with chulas to inhaling noxious fumes equivalent to 400 cigarettes.

It is believed that the Ujjwala scheme played a part in the BJP's election victory in India's most populous state. Party president Amit Shah also alluded to the scheme in his post-victory speech.

Dharmendra Pradhan said that an amount of Rs 46,000 crore had been directly credited into peoples' bank accounts through the direct benefits transfers scheme.

Pradhan said that B.S. 4 clean fuel had been rolled out throughout the country on April 1. He also promised that the next clean fuel standard, B.S. 6, would be supplied by 2020.