New Delhi, 25 March (IANS). The number of LPG cylinders reflected by poor families has doubled in the last five years under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY). This information was given by the government in Parliament.
According to the government, LPG consumption of beneficiary families under the PMUY scheme has increased to 4.5 cylinders per year.
The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas told Parliament that 10.33 crore PMUY connections have been given across the country by 1 March 2025. The number of refill cylinders under this scheme has doubled in five years.
41.95 crore refills were distributed in the first 11 months of the current financial year, while 39.38 crore refills were distributed in 12 months of 2023-24. At the same time, the number of refills in 2019-20 was 22.80 crores, which shows an increase of about 100 percent in this financial year compared to five years ago.
The government said that since the introduction of PMUY, oil marketing companies have distributed a total of 234.02 crore LPG refills to PMUY customers by February 2025, including initial installation refills. Oil companies are distributing around 12.6 lakh LPG refills per day in FY 2024-25 (till February 2025).
PMUY was started in May 2016 with the aim of providing deposit-free LPG connections to women from poor families across the country.
Under this scheme, the target of issuing 8 crore LPG connections was achieved in September 2019. The second phase of the Ujjwala 2.0 scheme was started in August 2021 to cover the remaining poor families and 1.60 crore connections have been released by January 2023.
Apart from this, in September 2023, the Central Government approved the issue of 75 lakh additional PMUY LPG connections. Government oil marketing companies have completed the release of 75 lakh PMUY connections by 8 July 2024.
-IANS
ABS/