Congress accuses government of ‘lying’ on savings from LPG

During the two years, global crude oil prices declined 65 per cent from about $106 a barrel to around $36.

The clarification came in the backdrop of a newspaper report which had said that government’s actual savings were to the tune of only 2000 crore rupees and the remaining was softening of crude oil prices.

Party spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi recalled that in his I-Day speech from the Red Fort a year ago prime minister Narendra Modi had claimed that his government had saved Rs.22,000 crores on LPG subsidy through DBT Direct Benefit Transfer, Elimination of middlemen, action against black-marketeers and most importantly the Voluntary Give-it-Up campaign.

Th CAG report is expected to be tabled in the ongoing Monsoon session of the Parliament.

In order to avail of the LPG subsidy consumers need to register their mobile number with the distributor and also link their bank account with their Aadhaar number.

The government introduced direct bank transfers as part of its DBTL scheme launched in 2014, which includes transferring the cooking gas subsidy directly into citizens’ bank accounts, and asking high-income earners to voluntarily surrender their subsidies.

The government began paying subsidy directly into bank accounts of cooking gas consumers in select districts from November 2014 and in the rest of the country from 1 January 2015.

We corrected the system, and Rs 15,000 crore, which was stolen every year in the name of gas subsidy, has been saved,”Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said last year”. As a result of implementation of DBTL (PAHAL) mechanism, it became possible to block these 3.34 Crore LPG connections as the subsidy was transferred in the accounts of only those consumers who had registered under PAHAL and who have been cleared after de-duplication exercise.

As on 1 April 2015, there were 18.19 crore registered LPG consumers and 14.85 crore active consumers implying a gap of 3.34 crore consumers which were duplicate, fake or inactive accounts.

The government on Wednesday defended its calculations in response to a report by The Hindu highlighting the concerns raised by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) regarding the authenticity of its claims on dramatic savings in LPG subsidy.

If the DBT had not been implemented, the outgo on the subsidy would have been higher by Rs 14,818 crore in 2014-15 and Rs 6,443 crore in 2015-16, sources said.

Taking a cue from the claimed success of the programme, the government is now planning to extend the DBT scheme to kerosene (DBTK).