Beneficiaries of the Ujjwala scheme are only eligible for a limited amount of cooking gas LPG subsidy. As a result, the remaining customers will have to pay market prices for their LPG cylinders.
On Thursday, Oil Secretary Pankaj Jain stated that there had been no subsidy for LPG consumers from the beginning of the Covid epidemic, but that one had been provided for Ujjwala beneficiaries since then.
The Centre confined the cooking gas subsidy to the 9 crore poor women and other Ujjwala beneficiaries who had received LPG connections.
"No subsidy is paid on cooking gas since June 2020," Jain said in a press conference, according to PTI. "The only subsidy that is granted is the one that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced on March 21."
Sitharaman said that Ujjwala scheme beneficiaries will get a ₹200 per cylinder subsidy for 12 bottles in a year when excise tax on petrol and diesel was reduced by 8 per litre and 6 per litre, respectively, to assist relieve some of the burden caused by increased cooking gas prices.
Subsidies, by definition, are not supposed to become entrenched and extended, according to Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who spoke at the same conference. Subsidies must be degressive by definition.
A 14.2-kg LPG cylinder costs ₹1,003 in Delhi. Beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana would receive a cash subsidy of Rs. 200 in their bank account. That means Ujjwala recipients will only have to spend ₹803 for a 14.2 kg cylinder, compared to ₹1,003 for the cylinder in the national capital.
The government would spend Rs 6,100 crore on the Rs 200 subsidy, according to FM.
With immediate effect from June 1, oil marketing companies (OMC) have cut the price of a 19 kg commercial LPG cylinder by roughly Rs135.
The 19 kg commercial cylinder now costs 2219.00 in Delhi, down from 2355.50 previously. In Mumbai, the LPG price has been reduced to 2171.50 per cylinder from 2,307, while in Kolkata, the price has been reduced to 2,322 a cylinder from 2,455.
At the same time, a consumer will have to spend ₹2,508 in Chennai instead of ₹2,508 elsewhere.
LPG cylinders weighing 14.2 kg have stayed steady in price.
